Serpentine
by Bloodstained Comma
Summary: Epilogue up; completed. There came that déjà vu again, but Timothy brushed it away as though it were a spider that had landed on his shoulder by mistake. The familiarity confused him a bit, even disturbed him a little.
1. Monster

_Well. So I've been rereading_ _Half-Blood Prince and, as always, another idea dawned on me for a story when I read over Chapter 10._

_Lovely._

_**Full Summary**  
Morena Serran came from a rich wizarding family, but lived in a small farmhouse in rural Ireland with a selfish and neglectful father and a timid and scared mother. She was almost grateful when she came home from her last year of Hogwarts and found that she could leave that life behind. Her freedom, however, would come at a steep price: she would be forced into servitude for a dangerous sorcerer looking for a few items that would help him on his way to bring the wizarding world to a reign over all Muggles, and to refuse the request would practically be suicide._

_**Warning:  
**Deathly Hallows and Half-Blood Prince spoilers  
(For those who haven't read them yet...)_

_**Main Characters (as the story thingy only lets you select two)  
**Morena Serran (OC)  
Gellert Grindelwald  
Merope Gaunt  
Morfin Gaunt  
Marvolo Gaunt_

_I will be making one very minor change to canon. Morfin Gaunt's prison sentence is going to have to be shorter than it was in the book (so it will be about a year to a year and three months rather than three years) in order for the sequels to this story (A Second Heir, A Gaunt Tale) to work out properly._

* * *

The blood – the blood was what disturbed her more than anything. What sort of fmonster could have done such a terrible thing? Was there really any human in their right mind that would have chosen to do this rather than just use the Killing Curse? It was faster, more efficient, and it was, overall, more inconspicuous. There was only one word that could describe such a terrible thing: _wrong_. Just _wrong_. Morena wasn't sure what to make of it. There was a man she knew of that might have done it, but it seemed impossible. She lived in Ireland, and he hadn't been known to have ventured away from Bulgaria, not yet as it was.

Even if he _had_, what quarrel did he have with her family? The Serrans weren't bothersome of anyone. They were pureblood, and they took pride in it, but they managed to control themselves much better than the likes of the Gaunts or the Blacks or the Malfoys in Britain. They lived in a humble little house in the Irish country-side. They did their own farming and never bothered any Muggle or wizard in the area, as they were the only beings _in_ the area. Her family was well-to-do, but her father was a filthy cheapskate that refused to spend his money on anything, not even a decent home. The Malfoys were living in a mansion in Britain, while _she_ was stuck in a dingy farmhouse in the middle of bloody nowhere. Where had being nice gotten her family?

Well, it had apparently gotten them dead.

Indeed, after one _final_ grueling year at a school of students who thought she was nothing more than a piece of dirt, Morena Serran was Apparated home by her Aunt Murrain. She had been left outside the front door, only to walk inside her house and discover this gruesome scene on her own. The bodies must have been there for a while, as there were flies buzzing about the carcasses and the blood was dried on their clothes and the floor. The smell was absolutely rancid. As an only child, Morena had no younger siblings that could have been massacred.

Judging by the looks of pure horror and pain upon their faces, this gruesome crime against nature had been what killed them. Their attacker hadn't killed them before doing this; he had simply torn them to shreds. Morena shook the thought from her head before any mental pictures could be formulated as she examined her parents' lifeless bodies with mild curiosity. Why wasn't she frightened? She was most certainly disturbed, but only in the sense of nauseated. It didn't scare her to see her parent's lying dead at her feet. Perhaps it had to do with the constant abuse she had endured growing up. Her mother had never laid a hand upon her and her father had only hit her once – it was her mother she had watched get beaten to a state near death many times in her fifteen years of life. Her first thought when she looked upon the scene was her father had done this to her mother and then to himself, but that made little to no sense. No person could… do _this_ to themselves.

Morena found it hard to believe any person could do this to another, but it was easier to believe than the idea of an extremely gruesome suicide.

A sudden clatter came from the next room. Morena jumped at what sounded like a pot falling on the floor and the sounds of swearing muffled by the closed door. She carefully assessed the situation: the wooden floors were old, and certain floorboards groaned when imposed with any sort of weight. There was hardly any time to rack her memory as to which boards would creak loudly when stepped on. She could see only one way out of her own certain death. That was to run.

She started for the door. Though it stood directly behind her, she froze as soon as she turned. It wasn't of her own accord, obviously – had she been physically capable, she would have been out the door faster than a flash of lightning. However, her legs seized. They didn't feel frozen as in a leg-lock jinx; her joints merely felt stiff in her knees and at the tops of her thighs.

"I'll let you loose if you swear you won't run."

"And if I do?" Morena shot back, despite being in no position to shoot anything at anyone.

"You've seen your parents already, I'm sure. I would suggest you comply."

She gulped, feeling her heart speed up by a few paces. The fear was beginning to sink in now. The sight of her parents didn't scare her in the least, and that may have disturbed her more than even the blood framing their unmoving corpses. Whoever was standing behind her did scare her. His accent was close to Romanian or something similar. Bulgaria bordered Romania. The accent was slight – it could have even only been her imagination running wild. However, she knew of no one else, not one single person that could have done such a thing.

Slowly, she nodded in agreement. "I won't run."

"Or walk. I don't pay heed to technicalities. You try to escape, you die."

"I swear," she said. "I won't try to escape."

"Fine." She felt something hit the back of her legs, what she guessed was a counter-curse, and she could feel her joints loosen immediately. "Would you mind turning around for me?"

Not particularly keen on being slaughtered, Morena turned slowly around, holding her hands up to show she had no intentions of reaching for her wand. It was in her trunk, anyway, which she now felt was really a horrible idea. Rather than look up at her assailant, Morena chose to keep her eyes low to the floor. She was afraid to see if her theory was correct as to whom this man was. His voice sounded as though it belonged to a man of the correct age, one in his late thirties to early forties. However, she wasn't entirely sure, nor did she want to be sure.

"The last of the Serran family," she heard the man say. She heard footsteps now, slow heavy ones that seemed to be coming in her direction. "Morena, isn't it?" She nodded. "And you're still in school. It's a real pity how these things come to happen, don't you think?"

"_You_ killed them," said Morena through gritted teeth.

"They chose not to listen and were planning on calling in Aurors. I couldn't have that happening. My mission is much too important for any of the Ministry of Magic's cronies to be tossing me in prison when I've barely even begun it."

He seemed to be walking away now – she assumed he was pacing around the bodies of her parents. She was of half a mind to attack him, but she knew better. The odds of her winning were low, and she was mostly resentful of his detachment from the situation. He spoke as though he had done this – as though he had slaughtered Albin and Shelley Serran – for some great reason that Morena couldn't understand. Morena saw no reason that could justify this sort of killing.

"Your parents." The footsteps stopped now, directly in front of her. "I warned them that they wouldn't be let off easy." Could he read minds? How had he known she had been wondering what reason he could have had for such inhuman methods? "When one knows his death will be either extremely painful or extremely mortifying, then he is more likely to at least listen. When they know it will be both, it's almost a given that they will listen and obey. Needless to say, you father at least was an exception. Shelley was more than willing to listen, but Albin was stubborn. Once I had gotten rid of one distraction, your mother wasn't particularly set on listening any longer. She was going to Apparate to the Ministry of Magic. I couldn't do anything else _but_ this."

"You didn't have to tear them to pieces," said Morena quietly, clenching her fists to keep herself calm. She heard a chuckle as an answer.

"Weren't you listening? Their deaths had to be painful and mortifying."

"Why did you kill them in the _first_ place?"

"They refused to listen. Must you make me repeat myself again and again?"

"Why are you _here_? What in the name of _Merlin_ did _my_ family do to _you_?"

Morena finally looked up, and she flinched as she did so. However, she stood her ground. He matched the exact description of the greatest danger to the wizarding world in years. His hair was blond, curly, and shoulder-length, and looked as though it hadn't been washed in at least a few days. His eyes were dark blue and so permanently wide that they were nearly hypnotizing, but in a way that made him look insane in the worst sense of the word. He was tall and rather thin, close to frail, but still extremely intimidating somehow.

This was Gellert Grindelwald.

"They did nothing," he said with a rather amused laugh. Morena looked back at the floor, afraid to look at him for some reason she couldn't explain. "_Had_ they done anything to smite me in the least, I wouldn't have bothered coming here. I will tell you exactly what my purpose for being here is as soon as I ask you a few questions."

"If you did this to my parents, I can see why they didn't want to listen," said Morena, gathering all of her courage to glower up at the man standing in front of her. "There's no point listening to a person say the same things over and over."

"I agree, but we won't get anywhere if you keep interrupting me." He said this in an almost kind manner, and this surprised Morena. She didn't allow her glare to falter, however. "Please follow me. May I remind you what will happen if you don't?" He waved a hand in the direction of her parents before turning around and walking casually to the door of the kitchen. Stopping at the door to look behind him, he spoke. "I may have an unlimited amount of time, but I would prefer that you move your legs a bit faster."

With a continued glare, she walked to the door as well. "I'd prefer my parents to be alive. We don't always get what we want, do we?" She wasn't sure whether this was the full truth or not, however. In a way, she thought she might be better off with her parents dead.

"Indeed we don't," he said. "I wanted them to pay attention to what I had to say, and I didn't want to be forced to kill them. Unfortunately, as you can see, I didn't get what I wanted."

He walked through the already opened door at this, and Morena followed him to the small, round kitchen table. She chose to sit across from him, all though she wanted to sit nowhere near him.

"Morena," he began, "you're a Slytherin, aren't you? At Hogwarts."

"Yes."

"And you've been working on becoming an Animagus ever since your first year."

Morena's eyes widened involuntarily, and she couldn't seem to get them to return to their natural size. Her voice also seemed to be making an escape attempt as she spoke in an anything-but-calm voice. "H– how did you –?"

"I know a little about a lot of things. Now, tell me. Didn't you finally accomplish that goal in the beginning of your fifth year?" Morena nodded. "And what _is_ your Animagus form?"

"A… a snake…"

"Ah, yes," he said, sounding rather satisfied with this. "That will work perfectly."

"For what?"

"Not yet. You're eighteen now, correct?"

"Yes," she said. "And I'm not going to work for you," she added quickly. "I could Apparate out of here right now and you wouldn't have a bloody clue as to where I went."

"I've put a block on the house. If you Apparate from here, you'll be splinched into two halves. Go ahead and try if you don't believe me."

Morena instantly shook her head no. She had never been splinched before, and while she had learned the spell to set splinched body parts right, she still didn't want to suffer her top half being separated from her bottom, or her left side from her right. Grindelwald had quite obviously taken every necessary precaution to make sure that Morena couldn't escape – but why?

"Now, as I was saying," he continued in a rather laid-back manner. "Firstly, I've failed to introduce myself. I already know you are Morena Serran. I am Gellert Grindelwald."

"_Wonderful_ to meet you," said Morena sardonically. "Get on with it."

"Do you really feel as though you're in a position to be ordering me?"

"You obviously need me for something, so yes I do."

And at this, he laughed. "Smart girl," he said. "Now, how are you as far as manipulation goes? That is what I'll need you for mostly. Your personality is up to par, probably greater than – you didn't show much emotion other than disgust at the sight of the mangled remains of your own parents, and disgust of that sort can't be considered an emotion; it is just a natural human reaction to those who aren't entirely deranged. The sight honestly disgusts me, so I believe we're on equal footing."

"Equal footing!" Morena scoffed. "You're a bleedin' murderer! I'm not, how is _that_ equal footing?"

"It isn't. I'm speaking strictly in terms of intelligence."

"I'm smart enough not to go 'round killing people who don't listen to me."

"But you are smart. That's important. You also come from a long line of purebloods, and you can transform into a snake."

"Your _point?_"

"Morfin Gaunt would be my point. I'm going to need your help retrieving something from him – his father, rather, at the moment, but I imagine it will belong to Morfin soon enough. Marvolo Gaunt is growing old, and it's only a matter of time before he is sent to Azkaban for attacking the wrong person. The Gaunts are the last known heirs of Slytherin, and they are also the only known Parselmouths. Morfin Gaunt is twenty, not entirely _there_, in manner of speaking – he's quite a sociopath, in fact. He gets along with snakes better than he does people. They can understand him, he can understand them, and he can control them. If they don't obey him, he generally kills them. You're human at heart, so you would know to obey."

"How do you know I'd understand Parseltongue in my Animagus form?"

"If you can speak to other snakes in your Animagus form, you will have no trouble understanding Parseltongue."

Well, so much for that idea. It seemed to Morena that there wasn't going to be any getting out of this. Morfin Gaunt had gone to Hogwarts for two years, but had been expelled for setting a cage of snakes loose on a Gryffindor class after instructing them all to bite anyone they could hang onto. To say he wasn't entirely there was a complete understatement. The man was a complete nut job.

"What is it you need from the Gaunt family?" asked Morena resignedly. Grindelwald smiled.

"I see we're making progress. I seek the Deathly Hallows. There is a wand that is more powerful than any other wand in the world, an invisibility cloak that will never fade, and a stone that allows you to bring anyone back from the dead so only you can see them. I wouldn't tell you any of this if I didn't trust you – I know you're smart enough not to go against me. Marvolo Gaunt owns one of these – the stone. He doesn't know what it is; he thinks the ring the stone is inlayed into contains the Peverell coat of arms upon it. In so many words, he is correct in thinking that." Grindelwald pulled his wand from his pocket. "Are you familiar with _The Tales of Beedle the Bard?_"

Morena sniggered. "I hardly had the time to be reading fairy tales when I was little. My father had me fetching eggs from the chickens the moment I was old enough to carry them."

"Fairy tales, you say," said Grindelwald nonchalantly, tapping the tip of his wand against the table. "'The Tale of The Three Brothers' is far from that. Some aspects of it were likely to have been made up, but that was for the sake of using the story to entertain. The story talks of three brothers. Antioch Peverell was the eldest, and definitely the most foolish. Cadmus Peverell was the second eldest, and was a bit smarter than Antioch. Ignotus was the third and youngest and wisest. They all came across Death one day, from whom they received three items.

"Antioch Peverell asked for the strongest wand ever made. Cadmus asked for something that he could use to bring the dead back to life. Ignotus asked for a cloak of invisibility that would never falter or fade. They all got what they asked for.

"Antioch bragged about his all-powerful wand so much that he was killed and the wand was stolen by the murderer, giving this wand – the Elder Wand – the nickname 'the deathstick'. Death came for him first.

"Cadmus received a stone that would allow him to bring the dead back to life, the Resurrection Stone. However, he realized that the stone only worked to bring a person halfway between the realm of the living and the dead, so the dead would indeed live, but they would never be alive. He used the stone to resurrect a girl he wished to marry, and killed himself to join her as he realized she would be forever miserable if she stayed in the mortal word, where she no longer belonged. He was Death's next victim of the Peverells.

"Ignotus lived a long life. He hid from Death beneath his cloak for years and years, and it is said that he welcomed Death with open arms when he finally took the cloak off after living a long and happy life. Before his death, he gave the cloak to his son.

"All three items are the Deathly Hallows. The cloak." With a few sudden swishes of his wand, Grindelwald drew a red, glittering triangle in the air. "The stone." He drew a circle next, inside the triangle. "The wand." He drew a line from the top point of the triangle down to the center of its base. "The Deathly Hallows. The owner of all three items could be considered a master of Death." He waved his wand through the symbol floating in the air, and it slowly dissipated and faded. "Marvolo Gaunt, an ancestor of not only Salazar Slytherin, but also of Cadmus Peverell, is the owner of the stone. It is inlayed into a heavy gold ring of his, which he will give his son when he dies. It's obvious he won't last much longer. You will get the ring from Morfin, but you will need to get on his good side immediately. What person could he possibly get along with better than one that can transform into one of the creatures he looks at as his friends?"

Morena smiled. "You're going to kill me if I say no, aren't you?"

"I'm sure the answer to that question is obvious."

It was strange, the things she found humor in – she couldn't help but laugh a little. She could take the views of the muggle American, Patrick Henry, that she had heard of in her Muggle Studies class: "Give me liberty or give me death." She could take her own views: "I don't bloody want to die, but I don't want to step _or_ slither within ten feet of Morfin Gaunt." Either way, she was in a hole. She could either die a terrible death to avoid helping Grindelwald get these items or she could join him and live a life that she didn't want to live. The only way to liberty _was_ to die. Which was worse, immense physical pain or nerve-racking emotional suffering? To her, after only a moment of thought, the choice was perfectly obvious – she wasn't ready to die.

"My parents drove me insane while they were alive," said Morena. "What damage could a little more loss of sanity do to me? I'd prefer to stay alive, and I expect you'll be caught eventually as it is. I'll join you, but when you're on trial, I'm going to testify against you."

"Then we have an accord. You will work for me without complaint, but betray me the moment I am caught," said Grindelwald. "If I'm not caught, you suffer. If I am, then I do. That seems to be a fair arrangement. I do expect you to understand that any sense of freedom you have had in the past ends now," he added. "You will work for me and do as I say without question."

Morena smiled slightly. "Then it seems my life isn't going to change very much."


	2. Abused

_If you've read Half-Blood Prince, this chapter will be extremely familiar._

_This was the origin of my idea for this story - the snake in the Gaunt's house in that particular flashback chapter._

* * *

For the moment, Morena felt safe. She had a nice perch on a countertop in the tiny house in the middle of nowhere in Britain, and the two biggest threats to her safety (and her sanity) were both outside. It had been only a few weeks since she met Grindelwald, and he had already put her up to this. For that, she wanted to kill him. Then again, this was the most exciting her life had ever been. She constantly faced the threat of being nailed to a door if she didn't do everything she was told to do. If that wasn't exciting, then she wasn't a snake. Considering she _was_ a snake at that moment, it was quite exciting.

She didn't like the shifty looks Merope kept giving her, but she really couldn't blame the girl. There was no doubt she was accustomed to her brother's odd choice in pets… friends… whatever he considered his snakes – but he had probably sent them after her more than once. Merope had spent only a week in Hogwarts before being pulled out in her first year, as far as Morena could remember. The poor girl had been sorted into Ravenclaw, angering the short-tempered Marvolo Gaunt to the end of his wits. He had pulled her from school and no doubt beat her within an inch of her life. She was jumpy in nature, quite thin, and had dull and lank hair, and it was no wonder. The way her father treated her was inhuman – much like the way Morena's own father had treated her mother. He had never done much to Morena – he had never really done _anything_ for her, come to think of it – but Morena could recognize the similarities of the abuse easily.

Morena turnedf her head at the sound of the door opening to see a giant coming towards her. In the form of a small adder, he looked like a giant at least. She was picked up by this person and was inclined to bite him, but didn't – she didn't like the sound of having a nail driven through her spine, not in the least bit. She also didn't like being twisted like a plastic toy, but she would have to deal with it – her only options were to be killed by Morfin Gaunt, be killed by Grindelwald, or live life as a passive adder for a while. As the third option was the only one that involved her not being killed by someone, she would have to remain happy with it.

"All right, all right, all right!" Morena's head swiveled towards the door at the sound of Marvolo Gaunt's voice as her current controller sat down on an old armchair next to a fireplace. "Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it'll do you!"

Morena watched as Marvolo opened the door and walked in. He looked furious, or at least more so than he usually did. The man who followed him in was quite an amusing sight. He was short and rather chunky, and wore thick glasses that made his eyes look tiny, a frock coat, leather gaiters that covered his shoes, and a one-piece bathing costume. His clothing rather reminded her of the tutus and red bandanas Muggles would dress their small dogs in, though the ridiculousness didn't look half as adorable on a human, much less _this_ human. It was extremely hysterical, yes, but still slightly unsettling. Many wizards had no idea how to dress like proper Muggles, however – it wasn't the first time Morena had ever seen a sight like this, and she doubted it would be the last.

She vaguely listened to Morfin saying some senseless rhyme in Parseltongue, indicating he'd nail her to the door if she wasn't a good little snakey or something to that extent. She found it interesting that she could understand both plain English and Parseltongue in this state, since she was an Animagus and not just a snake… not that she enjoyed being told she would be killed if she misbehaved, of course. That bit wasn't as much interesting as it was just _wrong_.

She had a feeling this oddly dressed man was from the Ministry, and that he was here because of Morfin's attack on Tom Riddle, a Muggle in a nearby village. She had witnessed it herself. Tom Riddle was a young man, the son of an extremely wealthy landowner in the nearest town (she still wasn't sure of its name, as she had been Apparated by Grindelwald to the woods just outside of this house). He was handsome, tall, and dark-haired with dark-colored eyes, but also with an attitude that made her want to slap him. Despite being a Slytherin, she didn't have much problem with Muggles. However, she had problems with _anyone_ who acted like a pompous spoiled brat – that was exactly why she hated Abraxas Malfoy, and she was glad she never had to see him anymore.

Being a Hogwarts graduate was absolutely wonderful.

Marvolo introduced his daughter to the oddly-dressed wizard in a resentful tone (and Morena wasn't entirely sure if the resent was directed at his daughter or the man). The man kindly bid her a good morning, but Merope chose not to reply. She only continued shifting shuffling around in the kitchenette area of the main room after giving her father a quick look of fear.

The man continued speaking to Marvolo in a businesslike tone. "Well, Mr. Gaunt, to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son, Morfin, performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night."

Morena's head shot to the kitchenette at the loud, clanging sound of a dropped piece of crockery. Merope was already bending down to pick it back up.

"_Pick it up!_" Marvolo screamed at Merope. "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?"

"Mr. Gaunt, please!" The oddly-dressed ministry man sounded absolutely shocked at this display of hatred, but Marvolo Gaunt ignored it entirely. Merope picked up the pot she had dropped, looking rather embarrassed. Her hands were shaking so terribly that it fell from them again. She drew her wand from a pocket on the front of her ragged gray dress, pointed it at the pot, and murmured a spell. Her voice was shaking as bad as her hands were, and the wand seemed to misunderstand, as it shot a spell at the pot that sent it skidding across the floor. It only stopped when it hit a wall and split into two pieces. Morena was inclined to bite Morfin when he let out a cackle.

"Mend it, you pointless lump! Mend it!" Gaunt was yelling now.

Merope managed to stagger across the room to the pot quickly, nearly tripping over her own feet a few times. However, before she could raise her wand, another voice had spoken: "_Reparo_." The pot repaired itself. Morena turned her head in enough time to see the man from the ministry putting his wand away and Gaunt glaring at him in an utterly livid manner, looking something like an angered, oversized, and elderly monkey. He seemed to think better of whatever his initial instinct was (most likely either to hex or stab the man), and he directed his glare at his daughter. "Lucky the nice man from the Ministry's here, isn't it? Perhaps he'll take you off my hands; perhaps he doesn't mind dirty Squibs…."

Merope inclined her head to her feet as she picked up the pot. Without offering a thanks to the man, she moved quickly back over to the shelving in the kitchen area and put the pot in its rightful place. She then stood with her back to a piece of wall between a window and a stove and continued her intent staring at her feet. Morena had seen that same look many times upon the face of her own reflection when she had to deal with her own father ordering her around like a slave – it was the look of a person who wanted nothing more than to either escape or just disappear.

"Mr. Gaunt." Morena's attention turned back to Marvolo and the man from the Ministry he was no doubt beginning to hate. "As I've said: the reason for my visit –"

"I heard you the first time!" he snapped. "And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him – what about it, then?"

"Morfin has broken Wizarding law."

"'_Morfin has broken Wizarding law_,'" he mimed in a childish manner. Morfin cackled at this. "He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that's illegal now, is it?"

"I'm afraid it is," said the man, looking rather annoyed as he pulled a scroll of parchment from a pocket on his frock coat.

"What's that, his sentence?" said Marvolo angrily.

"It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing –" he began, but was interrupted quite suddenly.

"Summons!" Marvolo yelled in outrage. "_Summons?_ Who do you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?"

"I'm Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad."

So this was Bob Ogden, then. Morena only recognized his title because a letter had been sent to her father by him around a year ago for hexing a Muggle who had attempted to steal one of his sheep off the farm. The situation had been cleared up quickly once it had been assessed, as it was merely prevented thievery. It was no worse than Muggles shooting at each other with "guns" for the same reasons. As it had been the first and only time the Ministry had ever bothered their family, Morena had remembered almost every detail of it.

"And you think we're scum, do you?" Marvolo was now yellfing and advancing on Ogden, pointing at him. "Scum who'll come running when the Ministry tells 'em to? Do you know who you're talking to, you filthy little Mudblood, do you?"

Morena was beginning to like Marvolo Gaunt less and less. He was extremely childish, especially for his age, to think that the Ministry had some sort of personal grudge against him because they were summoning his son for hexing a Muggle. It was _Wizarding law_ – it treated _everyone_ the same. He was a bloody fool.

"I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr. Gaunt," said Ogden, trying to stand his ground but looking slightly fearful.

"That's right!" he yelled. He held up his hand an inch from Ogden's face, waving a finger with an old-looking gold ring with – and Morena's mind clicked instantly at the sight – a large black stone in it. "See this? See _this_? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it's been in our family, that's how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I've been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?"

"I've really no idea, and it's quite besides the point," said Ogden, moving his head back a few inches as the ring was waved within less than an inch of his face. "Your son has –"

Marvolo yelled something inaudible. Morena only blinked, but that was long enough to miss half of what had happened, as he was now dragging Merope by a gold chain around her neck. He shook the heavy gold locket at the end of the chain at Ogden, the chain strangling her,

"See this?" he yelled at Ogden.

"I see it, I see it!"

"_Slytherin's!_ Salazar Slytherin's! We're his last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?"

"Mr. Gaunt, your daughter!"

Marvolo finally released Merope, who scurried quickly back to her corner in the kitchen, straightening out her locket as she gulped for air.

"Don't you go talking to us as if we're dirt on your shoes!" said Gaunt indignantly. "Generations of purebloods, wizards all – more than _you_ can say, I don't doubt."

"Mr. Gaunt," Ogden said impatiently, "I'm afraid that neither your ancestors nor mine had anything to do with the matter at hand. I am here because of Morfin and the Muggle he attacked last night. "Out information is that he performed a jinx on the Muggle, causing him to erupt into highly painful hives."

Morfin laughed at this, as though he thought nothing could have possibly been more amusing. He stopped immediately when his father hissed at him in Parseltongue to be quiet.

"And so what if he did, then?" said Marvolo insolently. "I expect you've wiped the Muggle's filthy face clean for him, and his memory to boot!"

"That's hardly the point, is it, Mr. Gaunt?" said Ogden. "This was an _unprovoked_ attack on a defenseless."

"Yes, I had you marked as a Muggle-lover the moment I saw you."

"This discussion is getting us nowhere."

Morena couldn't have agreed more. However, it seemed the more that Bob Ogden spoke, the more Marvolo Gaunt spouted something about how noble his herritage was or how much higher up he was than Ogden (which was something, considering he lived in a three room hut). Unfortunately for Ogden, the moment he managed to get out something about Morfin's hearing, the sound of voices and horses' hooves outside the house became audible. Everyone quieted instantly as Marvolo shot a glare towards the door and Merope looked up cautiously from her feet. A girl's voice drifted in through the open window.

"My God, what an eyesore! Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?"

"It's not ours," said another voice, one Morena recognized to be Tom Riddle's. "Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village."

The girl laughed, and the sound of the horses' hooves galumphing over the ground outside seemed to be growing nearer. Morfin started to get out of his armchair – Morena was praying he would put her down somewhere, as she was dead tired of being restrained – but he was stopped.

"_Keep your seat,_" Marvolo said to him warningly in Parseltongue.

"Tom," said the girls' voice from outside, sounding to be right near the house now, "I might be wrong – but has somebody nailed a snake to that door?"

"Good lord, you're right! That'll be the son, I told you he's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecilia, darling."

Morena couldn't help but notice how Merope looked down at her feet at the sound of the word "darling".

"'_Darling,'_" she heard Morfin whisper in Parseltongue. "_'Darling,' he called her. So he wouldn't have you anyway."_

Merope's face seemed to grow a shade lighter at this, and she kept her eyes on her feet. She looked close to fainting.

"_What's that?"_ Marvolo said sharply – they obviously didn't want Ogden to hear this conversation, as Marvolo replied in Parseltongue. _"What did you say, Morfin?"_

"_She likes looking at that Muggle."_ Merope looked absolutely terrified – if Morfin kept on with this, there was no doubt Marvolo would lose his temper. "_Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn't she? And last night –"_

Merope had finally looked up, and she was shaking her head pleadingly at her brother, but he didn't seem to care. "_Hanging out the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn't she?"_

"_Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?"_ said Marvolo quietly, his voice sounding venomous.

If Morena could have laughed at the absolutely bewildered look on Ogden's face as he stood in the middle of this exchange of hissing voices, then she probably would have chuckled a bit. She wouldn't have done so in a cruel manner, as she knew she would have been just as confused had she been in her human form.

"_Is it true?"_ Morena looked back at Marvolo, who was advancing towards his daughter. Her eyes were wide with terror. _"My daughter – pure-blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin – hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?"_

Merope pressed her back against the wall as though hoping she could sink through it, seeming incapable of speech. She shook her head "no" frantically, but Morfin continued.

"_But I got him, Father! I got him as he went by and he didn't look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?"_

"_You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!"_ Marvolo yelled. He reached his daughter and closed his hands around her throat.

As Morena was reconsidering her agreement with Grindelwald to stay in her serpent form for as long as possible to save the girl, Ogden took the opportunity. "No!" He raised his wand and brought it down so it pointed at Marvolo Gaunt whist yelling _"Relashio!"_ He was thrown off of his daughter and landed on his feet, but he stumble over a chair and fell on his back. Morfin gave a roar of anger. Morena shut her eyes tightly as she was dropped onto the floor next to the chair, then opened them in time to see Morfin brandishing a knife at Ogden and shooting hexes at him. Ogden did what anyone with an ounce of sense would have done – he ran. Morfin started after him, but was commanded by his father to stop as Marvolo managed to get to his feet. Reluctantly, Morfin walked back over to his chair. Morena lay very still, hoping not to be noticed, and she wasn't. She would have given a sigh of relief if snakes _could_ sigh.

She managed to slither out of the house through a hole in the wall that she had located earlier when she was making an escape plan just in case something went wrong. Morena would return later, but she had to report back to Grindelwald first – there was no doubt both Morfin and Marvolo had just secured themselves two tickets to Azkaban, which was going to make getting that ring quite a bit harder.

After slithering back a little ways into the forest surrounding the small house, Morena changed back into a human. After being tossed onto the floor like that, her back hurt worse than it ever had in her life, and she also had a slight stomachache just from watching the way Marvolo treated his own daughter. None of that was important to Grindelwald, of course. What was important was that she had seen the ring, but it would soon be headed off to Azkaban. With a picture of what Grindelwald called headquarters in her mind, Morena disapparated from the scene, grateful to be leaving if only for a little while.


	3. Headquarters

_**pendragonbaby07**: thanks for the review, and I'm definitely going to keep going with this story. I'm only working with my HP stories at the moment, and I'm still working on chapters of a few of my Death Note fics, I've just slowed down a little on them._

_But with all the work I put into researching timelines and coming up with years and months and even singular days that would be parallell to canon, I'm definitely not quitting on this one._

* * *

"_Augamenti_."

Morena watched as her coffee cup filled with water from the tip of her wand. She glared into the reflection of her own tired-looking eyes – try as she may, she could never get those dark circles to disappear. They had even been there when she was a child, inherited from her father. Coupled with her small nose, thin lips, and narrow eyes, she looked like either a very tired or very angry snake – her animagus form had been no surprise to her at all. In fact, she had rather expected it. She could still remember being called "Morena Moccasin" in her first and second year. Preteens could be so cruel.

Of course, they grew up. When they finally realized how white her skin looked, and how black and lank and messy her hair was all the time, they started referring to her as "that vampire girl." Ah, memories. How _wonderful_ they could be!

She tapped her wand on the side of the cup a few times. "_Fervereos_," she shot at the cup through gritted teeth, as though it had caused her years of suffering. A small jet of red sparks hit the water, and it instantly began steaming. Morena set it down on the table in front of her and dropped a teabag into it. She then looked down at her watch.

"Where the hell _are_ you?" she mumbled to herself, glancing over her shoulder at the front door of the cabin. She shook her head at her own stupidity – there was no point in a wizard who could apparate using the front door. "Bloody ingrate… makes me go through being tossed around all morning by an inbred lunatic and can't even show up on time to discuss it…"

"So that's how you feel about me, then? I'm hurt."

Morena jumped at the sound of the sudden voice and looked up from her watch at the armchair in the room. Grindelwald was now seated there – she wasn't entirely sure how he had managed to Apparate and be one hundred percent quiet about it.

"Don't be. I don't think highly of much of anyone."

"I wouldn't expect any different of someone with your attitude. And it's besides the point, anyway," he said, cutting Morena off from responding. "You said you had news?"

"_Yes_, I do," she said, picking up her tea from the table. "First of all, you're going to buy me some bloody aspirin. That inbred retard tossed me around so much I about got snapped in two and I was almost positive he was going to nail me to the door before I left. That means your paying for my therapy as well, as my near death experience has addled my brain.

"Now, for the really important bit," she continued. "Morfin Gaunt has a Ministry hearing for hexing a Muggle. After his father's episode over it and his episode over his father's episode, there is no doubt they'll _both_ be in Azkaban soon. For how long, I haven't got a clue. There is no doubt that Marvolo Gaunt will carry his precious ring to Azkaban with him. If he dies there, it will go to the Ministry. If he gets out before he dies and dies at home, it will go to his son. If his son is still in Azkaban when he dies, it goes to no one. With any luck, he will die at home and no one will know about it except me as I'll be watching him, and I can take the ring from there and you can be completely rid of me, wouldn't that be nice for both of us?"

"Not so much, no," said Grindelwald. "You'll be good for spying and you're not bad as far as planning goes. I don't have many permanent followers, and as I do need more, I may have you continue working for me if you finish with this quickly. Feet off the table please." Morena raised an eyebrow, but took her feet off of the coffee table in front of her. "I didn't kill the hermit that was living here so you could make a mess of the place."

"What?" she said perplexedly. "You said this was _headquarters_."

"Your headquarters, yes. You're not coming to my own, you're not to find out who my supporters are until you are one of them. It's slightly more convenient and less expensive than having you stay in motels as you obviously won't be able to return to your home in Ireland, and this is so rural that I doubt anyone will ever find it."

"Well," said Morena, putting her feet back up on the coffee table, "as long as I'm living here, I don't suppose you have any say in where I put my shoes."

"If you value your life, then yes I do."

Morena scoffed, but put her shoes back on the floor yet again. "And _I'm_ the one with the attitude. Aren't we done here?"

"Not yet, and I might be able to establish why if you could manage to keep your mouth shut for more than ten seconds at a time." Morena glared at him, but refrained from saying anything. "Good. We need a more solid plan in case your scenarios don't work out. Take for instance, Marvolo Gaunt returns home and you find that he has left the ring with Morfin, who is still in prison, to reduce the risk of it being stolen."

"He is quite protective of it. More protective of it than of his own daughter, to say the least."

"I expected he would be," said Grindelwald, though he sounded slightly annoyed over it. "What about the daughter? Is it likely she'll leave while they're gone to prison or does Marvolo Gaunt have her trained well enough to stay?"

"I don't doubt she would leave, but she might need a little convincing."

"Good, then you won't be completely useless while the ring's owners are gone."

"Completely useless?" Morena scoffed and crossed her arms, and took to staring off in the other direction. "That's a nice thing to say about someone you forced to work for you after slaughtering her parents. Really nice."

"You were grateful enough. From what I gathered, there is no doubt you would have eventually killed your father anyway."

"What the bloody hell are you going on about?"

She managed to disguise her confusion for annoyance, but the perplexity was still inset in her mind at the statement. How could he have known that she didn't really mind her parents being… well, being _dead_? She enjoyed being free from all the yelling and grueling work on that stupid farm, but she hadn't ever said that. So now Grindelwald could read minds too? That was a somewhat unpleasant thought. Morena knew of Legilimency, but she knew no one that knew how to use it. Dumbly-something, that wizard famous for his studies in alchemy whatever-his-name-was knew of it from what she knew, but he was a genius and was _bound_ to know about it. It seemed he knew about everything else in the world. He was one of Grindelwald's greatest pursuers and rivals, and with someone like him on Grindelwald's trail there was no doubt he would be caught.

… Eventually.

"I believe you know exactly what I'm 'going on about.' You think rather loudly. I have no reason to want to know what's in your mind, but anyone with even an ounce of knowledge of Legilimency could hear your thought process. Now, if you'll allow me to continue –"

"I think _loudly?_"

"As I was saying," Grindelwald continued, raising his voice above Morena's, who began strumming her fingers on her knee in her impatience of his disregard, "regardless of whether Marvolo and Morfin Gaunt go to Azkaban, you will remain at the Gaunts' home. If they do go, then you will reveal _only_ to Merope that you were the snake that managed to escape from her brother durring his outburst. You'll tell her you had lost something in those woods and it seemed it would be easier to find if you kept low to the ground in your animagus form, but you strayed accidentally in the path of Morfin Gaunt. You will convince her she needs to leave the house, and then you will check every day on that house until Morfin or Marvolo Gaunt return home. If Marvolo Gaunt returns home alone and has the ring, kill him and take it."

"Wait, _I_ have to kill someone? I don't like that."

"You also don't like Marvolo Gaunt, I don't see why you would have any trouble killing him."

Morena made a noise of frustration and hit her fist on the coffee table in front of her. "I _wish_ you would stop reading my mind! I don't say the things in it out loud because I wish to keep them _private_ from the outside world. You, being a part of the outside world, do not need to be inside my bloody head!"

She crossed her arms at this and again turned her head in the opposite direction. Having never had her mind read before, Morena wasn't entirely sure what to think (or if she should even continue to think for fear of someone knowing what she was thinking). She definitely didn't like it. There couldn't possibly be a worse invasion of privacy than for someone to be breaking into her thoughts. Of course, apparently she _thought_ too _loudly_ – she scoffed to herself at this. How was it possible to _think **loudly**_? That didn't make any sense at all.

"If Marvolo Gaunt doesn't return home with the ring," Grindelwald continued calmly, as if there had been no disturbance whatsoever (furthering Morena's extreme irritation with the man), "then I will have to think of something else. He will still be unimportant however, and will possibly be in the way, and I may still require you to kill him – your protest to the subject will only succeed in irritating me, so don't bother."

Morena only scoffed again. "Then irritated you will be. I don't want to kill _anyone_ and I'm going to bloody fight it tooth and nail."

"I could easily Imperiuse you into doing it anyway, so there isn't much of a point in objection, then, is there?" She chose just to grumble a few swears in response rather than complain again. It seemed to be getting her nowhere, anyway. "Good. Then I believe that is all." She saw a shadow move, and she assumed this was Grindelwald standing. "Oh, yes, I didn't mention. The hermit that lived here was a wizard, and he did have a house-elf. If it misbehaves, feel free to get rid of it. It was rather attached to its master, so it may attempt to kill you in your sleep."

"Gee, thanks for the heads up…"

"As I said, if you don't want to take the risk, get rid of it. You have your new orders for the time being, then – convince Merope Gaunt to leave her home and stay there until she does. If you have any more new developments in the future, report them to me immediately. Now, go on to the Gaunts' house and see if Marvolo and Morfin have been taken into custody yet."

"I don't even get to finish my tea?"

"Go."

Morena rolled her eyes before setting her tea down. This was twice as bad as the work her father made her do. "Fine." She stood from the sofa and shot a glare at Grindelwald. "I'm going."

"Thank you."

"Yeah, whatever." She focused her mind to the part of the woods she had Apparated to last time and, with a pop, she was gone from the cabin and going through the rather uncomfortable, constricting sensation of Apparating. It stopped a moment later, and she looked around to see the same bit of the woods she had landed in earlier. The sun was migrating towards the western side of the sky now, whereas it had been set towards the East earlier that morning – that was the only difference, and it was barely noticeable in the thick forest.

Morena decided that, just in case Marvolo and Morfin hadn't been arrested for some unknown reason, she should probably head to the house in her snake form – and so she transformed. She moved almost silently across the leaves blanketing the forest floor, all dead and brown despite the hot summer weather. The leaves in the trees high above her head were perfectly green, but the forest floor was littered with dead plants and similar mulch that greenery was poking up through.

It seemed a rather long journey to that little house, but she supposed this was probably because her current form was so small. She made it there in good enough time, however, and she found the crack in the side of the stone hut. She slowly slithered through it, only poking her head through to begin with. When all she saw was Merope, pacing back and forth in the kitchen in a rather restless manner, she took the opportunity to go through.

"_Are you here alone?"_

Merope jumped at the sudden voice, obviously unaware of Morena's presence, but she seemed to recognize the voice as a snake's hiss, as she replied (rather nervously, Morena noted), in Parseltongue.

"_Yes… who's there?"_

"_Where are your father and your brother?"_

"_The wizards from the Ministry took them into custody for attacking them. Where are you?"_

Good – it was perfectly safe. Morena could turn into a human and _hopefully_ not be hexed. Even with her father and brother gone, she still seemed rather timid and scared, which meant she would definitely need some convincing before she could leave. It also probably meant she wouldn't attack Morena, but that was mostly wishful thinking. So, the moment she was in her human form again, she made sure to put one hand at her wand. Merope, who had been looking for the source of the voice she had heard, turned around and jumped at the sight of Morena now standing there. She said something in Parseltongue, and Morena shook her head in response.

"I only understand that in my animagus form, sorry," she said, gripping the handle of her wand.

"Oh." Morena let her wand go when she saw that Merope was beginning to back away towards the corner she generally stood in to try to keep her father from noticing her. "W – aren't you the girl from Ireland who –"

"Yes, Morena Serran. That's me," said Morena, looking down at her feet. "I managed to escape being killed by transforming and getting out of the house, then Apparating. The wizard that did it had put an Apparition block on the house. Long story, but I ended up in the woods out there and accidently strayed out into the open, and your brother found me. I was here for the Bob Ogden ordeal. I figured they would probably be arrested." She sat down on the arm of a chair she had been standing next to upon transforming. "You realize you could leave now, don't you?"

Her eyes widened. "My father would kill me if I left."

Morena laughed, shaking her head. This was going to be far too easy. All Morena would need to do would be to convince her that her father would have no way of finding her, and then she would be out faster than a Muggle could run from an angered Marvolo Gaunt.

"What's funny?"

"It's nothing," said Morena. "Just I always thought the same thing about my father. I was more worried he'd kill my mother if I left, but I know now that there would have been no way for him to find me if I _had_ left."

"But if he ever _did –_"

"Tell me," said Morena, standing up and walking to the kitchenette area where Merope was. Merope seemed to grow warier yet at this sudden movement. "What's the farthest your father has ever ventured from home?"

"D – Diagon Alley…"

"How long ago?"

"The year before Morfin was kicked out of school."

Morena nodded. "You're eighteen, aren't you?" Merope nodded slowly. "You've got your entire life ahead of you. Would you rather spend it out in the real world or cooking your father dinner while he shoots insults and hexes in your general direction?"

She shook her head at this. "I've never even been to Hogwarts. I took Morfin's old textbooks after he was kicked out and read them, but that's as far as I ever got to learn. My father only taught me spells that could be used to do chores."

"Muggles can survive without magic, can't they?"

"I guess so, but –"

"You could start a new life, just move to a nice little Muggle neighborhood where no one knows you and therefore can't associate you with your father."

"I would, but it's not just him," said Merope, glancing at a window on the front of the house.

It didn't take Morena more than a moment to understand. "Oh." Unfortunately, that was the best thing she could come up with to say on a moment's notice. Of course, she should have thought of it; it was the reason Marvolo and Morfin were off to Azkaban in the first place – Tom Riddle. He was the Muggle Morfin Gaunt had hexed, the one that Merope apparently "hung out of the window to see coming home," according to Morfin (whose word couldn't really be taken literally, considering he was more or less out of his mind).

"I'll never see Tom again if I leave."

"So Imperiuse him into coming with you," said Morena – it seemed a reasonable enough idea to her. "I could show you how to use the spell."

"I'm not going to do that!" said Merope, shaking her head rapidly. "That would be wrong."

It was nice to see someone in the Gaunt family had a sense of right and wrong, but it wasn't particularly good in this situation. If Morena couldn't talk Merope into leaving, then that would foil almost any plan Grindelwald could come up with to get Marvolo Gaunt's ring.

But then – _then_ it hit her. Merope loved – or at least _thought_ she loved – Tom Riddle. That was why she didn't like the idea of using the Imperius Curse on him. That was more forcing him. There was another way, however, a method that Morena hoped beyond hope that Merope would have no problems with. There was no doubt that if Merope didn't leave, Grindelwald would find another, slightly less humane way to take her out of the picture. Morena didn't want anyone to have to go through that, so this seemed likely to be the last resort.

"What would you say to Amortentia, then?"

"A… Amortentia?" she said, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

"Ah, yes," said Morena, "I learned about it in my sixth year. I suppose I'll have to explain a little."

Morena did truly hope Merope would agree to this idea rather than shoot it down as she had the Imperius Curse. Amortentia, the world's strongest love potion, seemed to have a more romantic appeal to it, which Merope might be more apt to accept. She could only hope.


	4. Morgana

_Oh meh goodness._

_Finally finished this chapter - and **sooooo** happy. Didn't think I ever would, but here its, complete with its very own **warning**:_

_Anyone uncomfortable with mention of suidice should skip over the bit of dialogue explaining what happened between Marvolo Gaunt and his wife. IT doesn't go into any great grusome detail, just thought I should leave a warning._

_And **Disclaimer**, of course: Me no own Gaunt family, Diagon Alley or any places in it, galleons, sickles, knuts, Amortentia, Grindelwald, Little Hangleton, Tom Riddle, or any canon facts in the realm of HP. Me do own Morgana Gaunt, Lindus, Marcus Potter, Belinda Brooks-Potter, Morena Serran, the shack in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, and "Master" Brooks._

_I wonder, can anyone that's read my story **A Gaunt Tale** figure out who Lindus is? Don't answer until you've actually read this chapter and **A Gaunt Tale**, obviously. I'll give you a cookie if you can, as I made it a pretty easy connection to make._

* * *

Merope had taken a total liking to the idea of the use of Amortentia, so much that she had taken immediately to coming up with a plan to get Riddle to drink it. Happier yet with the plan was Morena, who knew for a fact that Merope would have been killed if she hadn't agreed to this. She didn't think the potion would take too long to make, and a concealment charm could be placed on it that would make it look like plain water. She could stop him on a particularly muggy afternoon in July on his way home and offer him a glass of water.

So now, after a day of talking Merope into believing the plan was not only full-proof, but also nowhere near as immoral as the Imperius Curse, Morena was in an apothecary in Diagon Alley with much of her appearance greatly transfigured; she had found rumors in the _Daily Prophet_ that she had killed her parents and taken off, and she didn't particularly want to be seen in public as Morena Serran when she had Aurors out looking to question her. As she also didn't want to be found getting money from the Serran family's Gringott's vault for fear of being suspected, she was using Grindelwald's own money – he seemed to be willing to pay anything or go to any lengths to get even one of the "Deathly Hallows." Morena still thought it to be bogus, but if he was so determined to get that ring that he would kill her if she mucked things up for him, she wasn't about to argue.

She had purchased a book on advanced potion making in Flourish and Blotts after making sure Amortentia was in the book and in great detail. She was now in an apothecary, one of her least favorite places in all of wizarding London. Her cloak was pulled up over her head as she looked at tiny, sparkling fairy wings in a small jar hanging from the wall. She picked it up and put it in a small cauldron she had earlier bought in a cauldrons shop across the street. Interesting as the apothecaries were, their smells were absolutely putrid. This one in particular held to a smell of cow manure and rats, and was probably the worst one she could have chosen.

Morena moved shiftily to the counter to pay for the ingredients. She pulled her cloak's hood up further over her eyes when the cashier gave her a suspicious look as he checked the price on a jar of lacewing flies. "Planning on making anything in particular, ma'am?"

"Ah, no, no," said Morena, keeping her voice as steady as possible as she pushed a strand of yellowish hair behind her ear. "Just ran out of a few things in my potions stores, thought I should probably stock up."

"Right you are. This'll be three galleons, ten sickles, and three knuts."

Morena fished around in a small bag attached to a belt-loop on her skirt beneath her cloak and counted out the coins to lie on the counter. She scooped all of the jars back into her cauldron and left quickly. She Apparated with all of the ingredients into the forest outside of the town she had learned was called Little Hangleton and quickly hurried to the edge of the forest. She stopped there when she heard voices and the sounds of horse hooves clopping on the ground coming from the road. She transfigured her hair to its usual messy, flat-looking black state and put her hood back up, hoping it might help her to blend into the dark forest a bit better.

"… believe Gaunt and his son were taken away, the old tramp that owns that house over there," she heard a woman's voice saying. "It should only be a matter of time before that daughter of his leaves. The poor thing seems horribly mistreated. I've seen her 'round the shop before buying food. I do hope she has the will to leave, no one deserves that sort of treatment."

"That land will belong to the Riddles if Gaunt never comes back, and it'd do better in Anthony's hands, or his son's for that matter," a man's voice replied. "Anthony's getting older, there's no telling whether he could pass on a year or even fifteen years from now."

"Well, I still do have sympathy for that poor girl. Whatever happened to her mother? I believe she was living there with them until a few years ago, do you suppose she left?"

"With Gaunt, there's no telling. Could've beaten the woman to death if he treated her anything like his daughter."

Morena waited until the voices were completely out of her range of hearing before stepping out onto the path lighted only sparsely by sunlight. The Gaunts' house was visible and easily within walking distance. She glanced back at the man and woman that had just passed her, saw that there was no way they would hear her from so far ahead, and she hurried to the house with the cauldron – any Muggles to see her carrying a cauldron to that house would have put strange ideas into their heads about Merope Gaunt, who didn't deserve any such thing.

Morena knocked on the door (which was now free of any nailed snakes) before opening it and hurrying in. She moved to the kitchen table and set the cauldron in the center of it. Merope came out from a side room that was apparently a bedroom and looked from Morena to the cauldron.

"This is everything," Morena told her, knocking on the cauldron with her knuckles. "Also stopped by the _Daily Prophet_ building, they'll be delivering the paper here now by owl. I imagine they're common in the woods out here, so there should be no questioning on the part of the residents of Little Hangleton."

"_Idiot. She'll just get comfortable if you do things like that."_

Morena glanced over her shoulder discretely in case Merope hadn't heard the strangely echoing voice of Grindelwald. She apparently hadn't, as Grindelwald was nowhere to be seen. What was he doing now, then? First he could read her mind, now he could bloody _invade_ it?

"_Oh, nice job, I didn't think you'd ever guess."_ She heard the voice again and even though it sounded to be coming from somewhere in the room, she was sure she was only hearing it in her mind. _"Make up an excuse to leave now, we need to discuss whatever plan it is you've come up with that you haven't bothered informing me of yet."_

"Right, then," Morena said, both to Merope and the annoying voice she really wished would go away. "I need to get home for a couple of hours and do a bit of house work. Old shack in the middle of nowhere, quite dingy, really, needs some fixing up, anyway." Morena nodded. "If I'm not back today, I will be first thing tomorrow morning. So, _au revoir_."

"Er – bye."

Morena gave a wave and Disapparated from the spot. After travelling through what felt like a wormhole that she definitely wouldn't have been able to fit through in normal circumstances (or even as a snake), she reappeared in the living room of the log cabin in the middle of nowhere she was now forced to call home. Already sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea was Grindelwald, looking rather bored. Morena didn't so much as glance at him as she took her favored seat in the middle of the sofa.

"I see my broadcast made it to you," he said, sounding rather pleased about this. "First time I've ever attempted using Legilimency at such distance, it's quite good to know it works."

"Nice to know I'm just a test dummy," said Morena. "I believe you called me here to find out what I'm planning?"

"Yes. I understand you were away from Merope Gaunt for a period of time today to head to London, Diagon Alley specifically. I was merely wondering if it had anything to do with your plan to get her out."

"Had everything to do with it, thank you very much." Morena pulled her feet up onto the large sofa to sit with her legs crisscrossed. "Merope Gaunt refuses to leave the house unless she leaves with Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle is a Muggle that lives in Little Hangleton, which is the town she lives just outside of. I suggested the Imperius Curse, but nice a girl as Merope Gaunt is, she doesn't want to use an Unforgivable Curse, particularly not on the love of her life. So, I suggested Amortentia."

"The strongest love potion," Grindelwald said. "Did you happen to mention to her that it doesn't actually create love, but rather an obsession?"

"Trick question," said Morena with a put-on bored sigh. "Had I told her that, she wouldn't have gone for the idea. I just told her that she could disguise it as water and offer him a drink on his way home on a day he doesn't have his girlfriend with him."

"Very good," said Grindelwald. "I also have a bit of information, regarding the current situation with Morfin and Marvolo Gaunt. Marvolo Gaunt will be in Azkaban for six months. Morfin has a year _(__**AN: Canon says three years, but I had to change it for the story to work. Really didn't want to =( **__)_. That means that Marvolo Gaunt will return here by the end of December. Amortentia takes exactly five and a half months to make. I hope for your sake that she can convince this _Riddle_ to take the potion in less than half a month, or she and her father will both be killed, I can't have her getting in the way. I prefer to remain discrete, so you will be the one doing the killing, obviously."

"I already told you I'm not killing _anyone_," said Morena stubbornly, looking at Grindelwald for the first time since she had arrived to glare at him. "Particularly not Merope, do you even know what she's had to go through?"

"I know all about her entire family," said Grindelwald boredly, examining the back of his hand as though its subject matter was much more interesting than the Gaunts' family history. "Firstly, her parents, like most purebloods of the age, were related. Purebloods are a dying breed, and certain things can't be avoided. Cousins, I believe they were, Marvolo and Morgana Gaunt. They absolutely detested each other, but the marriage was arranged in advance and neither of them could do anything about it. They were good parents. Morgana was a kind woman and an obedient wife. Marvolo was a great father – oh, he was," Grindelwald said at a snort of laughter on Morena's part, "but he was a terrible husband. He drove poor Morgana to the end of her wits. Merope was six at the time. Her mother had a nervous breakdown. It wasn't the first one she'd ever had, but definitely the worst, and also her last. She and her mother were at home alone – Morgana and Marvolo had an argument, and Marvolo took his son out somewhere to allow his wife some 'time to think.' Morgana told Merope she was going to go lie down in her room, and she never came back out. Marvolo found her. She had hung herself from a chandelier, which he took down and burned only a day later.

"Despite how much he had always detested Morgana, Marvolo blamed the suicide on himself – quite accurately, in my opinion – and with some people, they just can't take that sort of responsibility on their shoulders. So, he lied to himself. How?" Grindelwald set down his now empty tea cup on the coffee table in front of a dumbstruck Morena. "He blamed Merope, of course. She had been the one at home with Morgana when it happened, so Merope _had_ to have caused it somehow. He managed to convince himself it was true in his twisted train of thought, and therefore, he began treating her as he would have treated anyone who he blamed the death on. He pushed her around, made her do every little bit of housework, called her names – any sort of punishment that came to his mind, he would use it. That girl has had the Cruciatus Curse thrown at her more times than she could probably count – used mostly as threat, I don't believe it's ever actually hit her more than a few times. You can relate, I know, with as many times as your father attempted using it on you."

Morena was too busy pondering the information she had just been given to shoot at Grindelwald to stop invading her mind. He understood everything that Merope had gone through – and he was still perfectly fine with killing her if she "got in the way"? He really was a monster. There was something terribly wrong there.

"Wrong?" said Grindelwald. "It's all for the greater good, Morena."

"Greater good…." Morena scoffed. "You're going to try to wipe Muggles off the face of the Earth, explain to me how that's _good_. I just don't understand. As long as they remain ignorant of our existence, we'll all get along fine."

"I'm not going to wipe them off the face of the Earth," said Grindelwald, waving his hand. "That _would_ be completely unnecessary. We were given powers that they weren't, true enough, but there's nothing saying we should use them to kill them. However, in all other species, power signifies dominance. Users of magic have more power than Muggles, and therefore should be the dominant ones of the human race. Only those who get in my way – whether witch, wizard, or Muggle – will die."

"You're still bloody mad," said Morena spitefully. "What point would be served in wizards dominating the world? I have no problems with not using magic in front of them. _Power_ signifies primal tendencies. Muggles continue growing more and more technologically advanced. They have light bulbs and electricity – we're still stuck with candles and fire like a bunch of cavemen. They're inventing motor run cars, and we've been using bloody _broomsticks_ since the medieval times. I'd _love_ a car, I can't bloody stand flying. Because they can't make everything appear out of thin air, they're _making_ things and getting more educated. Hogwarts has had practically the same lesson plans since the founders were there, and I'm sure most other wizarding schools have as well. If anything, they have a right to force us into hiding. If we dominate them, we may as well go back to living in caves and hunting food to survive. Sure, in cavemen times, power signified dominance, just as it does in animals. Today, intelligence is the main factor. As far as the sciences and math go, Muggles are ten times more worthy of control than we are. Oh," she said, rolling her eyes at Grindelwald's laughter, "and what the bloody hell are you laughing at _now_?"

"Just give it time," said Grindelwald. "You'll agree. You're a smart enough woman, and if you take the time to think about it, I can tell you'll agree. Now, I believe I'm on the trail of another of the Hallows," said Grindelwald, standing from his seat. "Wait until tomorrow to return to Merope. I suggest you find the house-elf that lives here and speak with him in the meantime. He already attempted to poison my tea, I'd rather it didn't happen again. I believe his name was Lindus."

With a wave and a swish of his cloak, Grindelwald disappeared silently from the spot. Morena remembered his mention of that elf from their last meeting, and that it might attempt to kill her in her sleep if she didn't do something about it. Halfway wishing that it had succeeded in poisoning Grindelwald's tea, she gave a quick look around the living room – no house-elf in sight. She gave a shrug, deciding that her idea was better than nothing.

"Lindus?" she called. She then jumped at the sound of a _pop!_ noise next to her. She turned her head to see a house-elf standing there with its arms crossed, ears standing straight up, and looking rather disgruntled.

"You is _not_ Lindus's master and cannot summon Lindus whenever you wishes to! Now where is the blonde man? Lindus has a _present_ for him…"

Morena noticed that Lindus was holding a small bottle of some green liquid. She was sorely tempted to allow the elf to stay until it achieved its goal of killing Grindelwald, but she knew what would happen to her if she did. That scared her. She wasn't noble in that sense; she'd have been sorted into Gryffindor if she was.

However, she _was_ cunning.

"Lindus," said Morena kindly, "that's your name, isn't it?"

"Yes, now where is –"

"Grindelwald left," she said. "I'm terribly sorry about what he did to your master. Did he have any family that you could stay with? I don't want to make you leave your home, but I'll be killed as well if I don't. I'm not working for him of my own accord."

Lindus looked up at Morena, his ears lowering sympathetically. "Miss is in danger, too?"

"Yes, very much, unless I do everything he says. Of course," said Morena slowly, eyeing the bottle of poison, "if you were to give me that little bottle and go to your new Master's home, then I could slip that into his tea next time he comes here. Then you wouldn't have to worry about him hurting anyone else."

The house-elf looked down at the tiny bottle in its hand, seeming to debate over what to do. "Lindus does know that Master Brooks's daughter Belinda lives in Britain…" he said slowly. "He could tell her Master Brooks died of old age. Mistress Belinda is due to be married soon to Marcus Potter, her family will surely need Lindus to help with cooking and cleaning and such," he said, nodding. "Lindus _must_ go." He held the bottle out to Morena, who had to suppress a triumphant grin. "Will Miss take care of this Grindelwald person for Master Brooks?"

"Of course I will, Lindus. Just go on ahead and find Belinda, I'm sure her family will need some help."

"Lindus thanks kind Miss very much!" he squeaked, sounding quite a bit happier. He pushed put the bottle on the coffee table, snapped his fingers, and was gone.

Morena took this moment of alone time to fall sideways onto the sofa. It was going to be a terribly long six months….


	5. Escape

"Now you add the lacewing flies. All of them, I only bought enough for this particular potion."

"But isn't that the last ingredient?"

"Very good. Interestingly, it is." Morena took another bite of a ham sandwich on nearly intolerably stale bread. "Nekft, shtir fibe time –"

"You're getting crumbs in the potion!" said Merope nervously, pulling it away from Morena on the table. Morena swallowed the bite of sandwich.

"Sorry, I'm just hungry. Been ages since I've had a proper meal."

"Stir five times…?"

"Oh, right, five times clockwise, and twice counter. Repeat that three times. Can't bloody stand this anymore…" she added, glaring down at the so-called _sandwich_ she had made herself. She stood from the table, walked over to the trash bin, and dropped it in. She moved back to the table as Merope was finishing the final step of the potion. "All appears to be in order, then, exact right color, steam's looking spirally enough. I'd say you did a right well job, particularly for this being your first potion," said Morena. "Your father gets out of Azkaban in a half a month's time, so I hope you will be able to get this to Tom beforehand. Would be easy enough to disguise as a cup of hot chocolate, I can do that bit easily enough."

Morena walked over to a window at the front of the small house and stared out it. The sun was nowhere to be seen, but it was daylight outside. The clouds weren't quite thick enough to block out the sun's light, but were more than thick enough to block out its heat and replace it with the blanket of cold that covered the land and kept snow falling onto the already white ground. It was the first of December, and it looked like Little Hangleton would be destined for a white Christmas this year. Regardless of whether it was or not, Merope couldn't be there to see it – she needed to leave before December 30, or her father would find her still there with a love potion sitting on the table and would be likely to drown her in it. Morena was still in charge of killing Marvolo Gaunt, but she refused to be placed in charge of getting rid of Merope as well. They had practically spent the past six months living together, so it was impossible for them not to have grown friendly.

"I think I might go out to town and pick up a few groceries if I can sort out this whole Muggle money mess," said Morena, feeling around in her pocket for money. "I still don't particularly understand how to use it, I suppose I'll have to figure it out."

After determining she _would_ head out, if only to buy some decent bread, she started for the door. She stopped, though, upon looking down and seeing she was still wearing her traveling cloak, and walking out in that would probably prove to be disasterous. With a few annoyed grumbles, she walked to the couch and removed the cloak, then looked down at her long sleeved shirt and long skirt, hoping it was Muggle-like enough for her not to get too many offhand stares (and wishing she had a proper Muggle jacket available to head out in the snow). She stopped at the door again.

"I'll be back soon."

"Yeah," said Merope vaguely, seeming to be much more intent on checking the potion and making sure she hadn't skipped a single step in the book. "Bye. See you later."

Morena headed out the door and stopped immediately to shiver in the terribly frigid air. She kept heading forward up the path her arms crossed tightly in an attempt to hold in at least some natural warmth. The walk to Little Hangleton was short enough, however, and she managed to shake off the cold in a little shop near the edge of the village quickly enough to go forward and search around for bread. She heard a scoffing voice in her mind as she picked up the bread.

"_Still acting as the Gaunt girl's servant, I see. How kind of you. Get everything delivered and teleport back to your own house."_

_Maybe I don't __**want**__ to…_ Morena thought to herself, almost rolling her eyes as she took the bread to the front counter of the store.

"_Yes, but you will."_

The cashier gave Morena a price and she managed to count out the right amount of money to hand it to him, and she was quite proud of herself when he counted it, determined it to be the right amount, and told her to "have a nice day."

"_There's no point in wanting to learn to use that rubbish money, galleons and sickles will be the official currency all over in good time."_

Never had Morena imagined that she would actually ever hold a conversation in her head with anyone other than herself. This was growing to a level of absurdity that she could hardly endure – Grindelwald had taken to checking her progress every day by just invading her thoughts in his own free time without any sort of warning given to her, and she had never hated anything more in her life. It was worse than the pointless name-calling she had endured in her school years, worse than listening to her father and her mother's constant arguments; she couldn't _stand_ wondering day in and day out, every minute of every hour, whether or not she was the only person inside her head. Grindelwald had always been more of a nuisance than anything to her, but it just kept getting worse.

Morena arrived back to Merope's house quickly and gave a quick excuse of needing to check on her own house before saying goodbye, leaving Merope in midsentence: "But what if Tom –?"

After travelling through what felt annoyingly like a wormhole, Morena's sudden Apparition led her to her "home," or headquarters as she still considered it to be, and on her couch. She shut her eyes tightly for a moment at the sound of the most horrible voice she had ever heard, and she pressed her fingers into her temples to attempt to quash her headache before it could have a chance to form.

"Good, you're here. Not particularly keen on the Muggle clothing, though," he added, his tone slightly annoyed. Morena glared, her fingers still firmly glued to her temples.

"It was necessary at the time," she snapped. "Now what is it you want? I didn't come here just so you could bark at me about my fashion sense."

"Nor did I call you here for such idle conversation. I'm sure you're aware that Marvolo Gaunt is due to arrive home on the thirtieth of December, aren't you?" Morena nodded shortly as a response. "Good. Then is your potion almost finished?"

"Finished this morning," she said, "and it seems to be perfect. Merope's a bit panicky over it, but it looks exactly how the book describes it, so I've no doubt that there aren't any problems with it. Our original plan for her to trick Tom Riddle into believing it's water won't work due to the time of year, but it can easily be transfigured to look like something more suitable to the current weather and still hold all the effects of Amortentia. She'll be out of the house very soon, which I know is all you're worried about."

"You think so little of my capacity for human feelings. I'm hurt."

"I'm sure you are. Now, what else am I here for?" asked Morena.

"To discuss what you plan to do about Marvolo Gaunt," said Grindelwald. Morena scoffed at this and crossed her arms. "Oh, you will do something. Lest you forget, you'll suffer the same fate as your parents if you don't."

"At this point," said Morena coolly, "I'm not sure whether or not I'd rather die or kill someone. So if I decide not to, feel free to do me in. I don't _care_. I don't see the point in him being killed, anyway. Couldn't you just force him over to your side like you have me?"

"And what good would an old man do?" asked Grindelwald. "He's nearing his sixties now, he's nowhere near as strong as he was at the height of his power – which, if I dare say it, wasn't very high at all – and I would have no use for him as a follower. As it is, he's only in the way, and I've already told you, Morena: The only ones who will die will be those who get in my way, regardless of who they are. Even if Marvolo Gaunt _is_ an ancestor of Salazar Slytherin, one of the greatest and wisest sorcerers to have ever lived, he lacks the intelligence or the power to be of any use. If I take that ring from him and leave him alive, he'll start an uproar and turn other pureblood families against me, which would cause nothing but trouble to my purpose. Even if he's left the ring with his son in Azkaban, he'll know that someone's out to get it – and I'd prefer you didn't mention my name while retrieving it from him, just for matters of subtleness – most likely kill the person who is, which would be you for the time, and grow even more wary of people being out to steal it than he already is."

"I can't believe he would think people would want such an ugly piece of jewelry…" said Morena with a scoff. "I mean, who really _would_ – other than you, obviously."

"You'd be surprised," said Grindelwald. "I'm most certainly not the only believer in the Deathly Hallows. I doubt I'll ever find the cloak. It will have been kept completely secret within one family according to legend, so it would be a hard thing to come by. The wand, though, I'm definitely on it's trail. It will be easy enough to steal, but to find its previous owner and defeat him will be a much harder task."

"Yes, I imagine so, now back to the Marvolo Gaunt situation. Say he doesn't have the ring and I decide to be nice and kill him for you. Then what about his son?"

"He'll be harder to get rid of. People would expect someone like Marvolo Gaunt, with his age and temperament, to drop dead of unknown or natural causes. His son, though – despite the looks of him, he's fairly healthy, strong enough – not intelligent, though. You _might_ be able to befriend him –"

Morena laughed. "That goon?" she said. "I'd rather poke a sleeping lion in its hind end with a stick than befriend him!"

"That could be arranged if you choose to disobey orders," said Grindelwald, sounding slightly irritated. "If you interrupt me again, I'll place a tongue tying hex on you to last for the next year." Morena nodded, choosing not to comment on anything she might have found unnerving or amusing about his slight attitude issues. "Thank you. As I was saying, you might be able to befriend him in your snake form – if he discovers a snake that can actually say more than just a few words back to him, he might not want to nail it to the door."

_Might__ not?_ Morena thought, her eyes widening for a moment. Though she chose not to say it aloud, she still heard an annoyed sigh issue from the man seated at the chair.

"I'll not count that as an interruption," he said.

"I was _thinking_! God, if you'd stay out of my brain for half a minute –"

"If he _does_ attempt to nail you to the door in your animagus form," continued Grindelwald loudly, and Morena shut her mouth, looking at him with loathing – and _he_ complained about being interrupted! –"then you will tell him you are not really a snake and transform into your human form. His wand will have been snapped in half after being in Azkaban, so while he could attempt to attack you, I do assume your magic would sufficiently overrule any attempt he makes. However, you will still need to convince him that you're there for a reason other than to steal his father's ring, as that will only cause him to grow even angrier. I suggest you think of something – I do have other things to be doing, myself, so I cannot assist at every turn. I will expect you to report back as soon as you have thought of a decent plan.

"Now, concerning Merope Gaunt, return to her and tell her you have to leave for the day, but give her instruction on what to do regarding Riddle. I fear that if she has someone to keep her company she may grow too comfortable, and therefore her attempts to win over this Muggle would be quite lax compared to any attempt she might make if she truly wanted to leave."

"I'm supposed to be helping her," said Morena. "She _won't_ be able to pull it off if I don't."

"Yes, I know – assist her as much as she needs and return to check in on her once a day _in your transformed state_ so she doesn't know you're there. You are to alert me the second you see she has left."

"Right," said Morena. "Can do. So I go back now, help her out as much as I can, then leave and come back here, but check on her once a day."

"Yes," said Grindelwald. "Very good. I must be going now," he added, standing. "Important things to do."

And, almost an instant later, he Disappeared from the spot in an entirely silent Disapparition that Morena had yet to perfect herself; hers were still signaled by a small popping noise (and occasionally a deafening _CRACK!_ depending on her mood). And while her mind was on the subject of Apparition – Morena stood up from the sofa, focused on the forest surrounding the Gaunt family home again, and found herself being pulled through an uncomfortable wormhole. She made her way quickly through the forest and to the small house, where she knocked on the front door a few times before entering without invitation to find a rather haphazard scene.

Merope seemed to have pulled half of the books off of the few shelves in the small house, and was standing in front of the table with a glass of water and a book, flipping through the last few pages of its index. She looked up when Morena entered. "Tom'll be walking by any minute now, what'd you have to take off so quickly for?"

"I've been having issues with my house being broken into while I'm away. I managed to map out the times the break-ins occur, and I remembered that just then was one of the times."

"O – oh," she said, sounding a bit surprised at this. "Did you catch anyone?"

"Not yet, but I won't be able to stay here anymore, so we need to get this done today," said Morena, grabbing her traveling cloak off of the sofa absently and pulling it back on. "I see you've been looking for a spell anyway," she added, looking around at the book piles pointedly.

"Most of my father's books were on Dark Arts, this is the only one I found for transfiguration, and it's only my brother's old course book," she said, looking at it. "It's not telling me anything about how to disguise potions as other substances."

"That's because it's not something you'll learn in school," said Morena, pulling out her wand. "Good, you've got a cup ready. Anything to get the potion out of the cauldron?"

"Er – All that's here that could be used is a soup ladle, will that work?"

"Yes, would you mind getting it for me?" Merope hurried over to the kitchenette area in the main room and began rummaging through drawers to find one while Morena examined the potion again. "Yes, it's definitely made perfectly," she said, giving its surface a poke with the stirring stick. "Quite shiny and spirally, just as the book says it should be. Thank you," she added as Merope handed her the ladle. Morena dipped the metal spoon into the cauldron and pulled it back up, then carefully poured a decent amount into the cup. "Do you know if your father had any vials that you could store this in?"

"I don't believe so, but would empty milk bottles work?"

"Well enough, certainly. I thought he seemed like he would be a bit of a pack rat," added Morena thoughtfully. She then tapped the cup with the side of her wand. "_Dissimulus substan._" The potion began to swirl inside the cup until its mother of pearl glimmer turned to the light brown color of hot chocolate. "Perfect. It's chocolate, but not exactly hot. That'll be fixed as soon as we hear him about to pass."

"If I have his schedule right," said Merope, coming back to the table with a few empty milk bottles, "then that Cecilia girl shouldn't be with him today. She's only with him on Mondays and Thursdays, when he heads out to Great Hangleton to pick up groceries for his parents. The days he goes alone are Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, which are his working days, and he has Saturdays off. Since today is Friday, he'll be coming home by himself. I can do a good disappearing charm, I had to teach myself how for housework," she added, looking at the cauldron, "so couldn't I just disappear it for now and make it reappear later when I need it?"

"That would work quite a bit more efficiently than milk bottles. And the only reason you need this much for this time is for the initial dosage – it works harder on Muggles than it does for witches and wizards, so they need more for the first time they take it, but the effect is still instant as long as he drinks a bit of the potion straight – but you can just hide a small amount in his food and drinks for later purposes, as what it will do is give a boost to the potion when its effects start to wear off. You'll want to go ahead and disappear it," said Morena, walking over to the window of the house and looking outside. "I think I hear horse hooves. They're still a ways off, but just to be safe – okay, that's done," she said when she turned and saw the potion to be missing from the table. "You wait at the window. Let me know when you see him, then I'll turn the lukewarm chocolate here into hot chocolate."

Merope came to the window and Morena headed over to the table and withdrew her wand, sitting down at the chair in front of the cup, waiting. This was it – this meant one less person that Grindelwald would kill (or one less she would be forced by him to kill). While she knew that his murderous rampage would be far from over, it was comforting to know that she had managed to save at least one person. She waited anxiously at the table, biting her fingernail and glancing from the "hot" chocolate to either window.

"He's coming!" Merope said quietly, still looking out the window. Morena tapped her wand on the side of the cup for a second time.

"_Fervereos._" She watched as red sparks hit the water, and the hot chocolate instantly began steaming. "All right," she said quietly, picking up the cup and taking it over to Merope. She took the cup. "You stand at the door, I'll watch from next to the window so he can't see me, and I'll tell you when to head outside."

"What do I say?"

"I don't know – why'd you have to ask me that _now_?" asked Morena, throwing out her arms incredulously. She pressed her fingers into her temples. "Er, mention how cold the weather is, offer him the cup when he agrees. Simple and to the point. Good. Door, now. He's getting closer." She continued her watch on the window, seeing the horse off in the distance with Merope's ticket to both freedom and life without fear of death (though she didn't realize that someone other than her father would be out to kill her if she didn't leave). "All right… few more seconds," said Morena, moving to the side of the window, though still waiting for the (incredibly _slow_ horse) to get to the house. "I'll turn into my animagus form and slither off when you go outside," she added to Merope. "It'd make too much of a racket if I Apparated."

She nodded. "Since you won't be coming back, thank you. For everything–"

"Not a problem – but you'll want to be heading outside now."

"Now?"

"_Now!"_ said Morena quietly.

She nodded, waved a quick goodbye with her free hand, and then opened the door of the house and walked quickly outside, shutting it behind her. As Morena converted herself to her snake form, she heard a bit of the conversation.

"Quite cold this winter, isn't it?" Merope's nervous voice leaked into the house through the open window.

The hooves of the horse patting upon the ground stopped. "One of the worst in years, according to my father." There was a momentary pause. "You're Gaunt's daughter, aren't you?"

"Yes, he's gone away for a while, left me in charge of the house and…"

But any other conversation was lost to her as she slithered off through the hole in the wall that she had once before escaped through and hurried into the forest. There was no need to stay, as there was no doubt the potion would do its job. She hurried as quickly as her small, legless and armless stature could allow her to until she reached a patch of forest that couldn't be seen from the road, where she reverted back to her preferred form and Apparated away to her own house.


	6. Presents and Annoyances

The days were long and harsh following Merope Gaunt's quick escape from Little Hangleton with the man of her dreams. After checking on the house a few more times to make sure Merope hadn't returned, Grindelwald had commanded Morena to stay away from the house until the day Marvolo Gaunt was due to return from Azkaban to Little Hangleton, where he would find his house dusty, empty, and a note from Merope on the table explaining where she was (which Merope had apparently left there after Morena took off.)

Morena had been forced to spend her days alone in the house so high in the mountains, in the dead of winter, with a blizzard battering the shuttered windows. The shutters were strong enough to hold and the house was well built (probably with quite a lot of magical reinforcement), but it was lonely. She wished for company in any form – she would have even welcomed the torment she received from Grindelwald when he was there. She selfishly regretted telling that house-elf to go back to his family. She knew it was right that she had, but at the same time she was afraid of being alone out here. It was abysmal, it was bloody _freezing_, and she was talking to herself so much that she was beginning to question her own sanity.

She had spent her Christmas entirely alone. That was a first for her. She had told herself she would appreciate it, the lack of arguments between her mother and father. Sitting on her couch and staring blankly at the fireplace, she now knew that the fights had served as a sort of alerter to her, and what they really yelled out to her for her entire life had been "happy bloody _(profanity)_ Christmas!" They served as the alarm that got her up early on Christmas morning, and that was the one morning of the year that her parents would stop arguing just to be civil for her. It was Christmas, a day of family and of happiness. Presents would be opened, and they would be a real family for at least a few hours of the morning.

When Morena entered Hogwarts, she had taken to spending her holidays there. Regardless of the torment from the few children who chose to remain at school, she had still had people to spend her Christmases with. She thought she would move out and get a nice little flat of her own after she left Hogwarts, come home for the holidays and be able to leave when the fighting started, but still have at least a few hours of time with her mother and father when they were all kind to each other. Now, that had changed, thanks again to the monster that called himself Grindelwald.

She stared at the fireplace with no Christmas tree in sight, no festive decorations, as she had been instructed to stay in that house until December 31 and had no time for holiday shopping. She was surprised when she heard a noise at one of her windows and looked over to see two owls, one with a package tied to its feet and the other with an envelope. Morena raised an eyebrow before rising to walk slowly to the window and open it. The owls entered, one after the other, and she shut the window quickly so no more snow could get in. The larger bird landed on the coffee table and ruffled its feathers until the white snow left them all, leaving them looking a silky black color. The other tawny owl sat upon the chair, giving an almost reproachful look at the black owl. The black owl hooted at her, and she quickly hurried over and untied the package from it, and it flew back for the window. She did the same for the tawny owl, untying the letter attached to its feet. It was a short plump little thing, and it didn't fly towards the window; Morena suspected it was waiting for its travel companion to leave first. She walked back to the window now and let the black owl out, and tried to coax the tawny owl to leave, but it simply stared at her.

Morena gave up after a moment and shut the window, shook the snow out of her hair, and went to the owl to retrieve the letter it had brought. She opened the letter envelope to find both a card and a piece of parchment inside. She unfolded the parchment before looking at the card and read down the paper quickly.

_Morena,_

_I couldn't possibly be more grateful for your help. Tom and_

_I are as happy as we ever could be, and I don't doubt it will_

_remain that way with the way things are going for us. I love_

_him as much as I ever did. __Thank you__ for everything._

_I know you said you stayed alone in the mountains. No one _

_likes to be alone on Christmas; if I knew how to Apparate _

_I'd visit, but I never had the chance to learn. Tom even_

_knows I'm a witch now and he's fine with it. He doesn't know_

_about the potion, I can't bring myself to tell him that, which I_

_suppose is for the best._

_As it turns out, my mother left me a bit of money when she_

_passed. I only recently found out – when I was packing my_

_things, I stumbled upon her will, and it said where she had_

_left the key to her vault. It's not much, but it's enough for now._

_I remember you mentioned you didn't have an owl, so, to put_

_it quite simply, Merry Christmas. She had been in the shop_

_for quite some time and already had a name, so she answers_

_to "Marcy."_

_Again, thank you for __everything__,_

_Merope_

Morena looked at the owl. "That explains why you've decided to stay, eh?" It gave a high-pitched hoot in reply, and flew over to the fire place to perch itself there. Morena headed to the couch to examine the package the other owl had brought – actually, she now saw one large package, one smaller one, and a letter envelope. She opened the letter envelope first, which contained a single piece of parchment with very few words upon it.

_Regardless of the situation, no one likes to be alone on Christmas._

_For that, I apologize._

Morena blinked a couple of times, and looked down at the package as she still held the piece of parchment. Absentmindedly, she refolded the parchment, set it on the coffee table, and opened the smaller package carefully and pulled out – the same bottle of poison that house elf had given to her. She could tell it was the same by a small design like a family crest on the side of the bottle (no doubt for the man's family who had lived there before). At the bottom, another piece of parchment read, _"In case it's required that you get rid of someone in the near future."_

Morena rolled her eyes and instantly changed her mind about her views on company.

"That son of a _bitch_…"

She'd rather have the company of a giant Ashwinder than the company of Gellert Grindelwald.

Still grumbling, she opened the second package. It was rather long and wide, square in shape on top, but not particularly tall and not very heavy. The contents were three copies of the _Daily Prophet_, and the headlines of the one on top rang out to her instantly. It was almost a week old, but it said, quite simply, "New Evidence on the 'Farmhouse Massacre': Morena Serran Innocent." The two pictures below showed her house, and the side of the barn that sat next to it. On the side of the barn was a painted symbol, an upward pointed triangle around a circle with a line drawn in its middle. Morena read, quite intently:

_Just outside Dublin, in a little farmhouse known to be the Serran family home, it is well known that tragedy struck months ago. For that time, as Morena Serran's body was not found with her mother and father and their estimated times of death would have been the day she returned home from school following her seventh and final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she had been named the main suspect by the Auror department of the Ministry of Magic. Now, new and startling evidence may prove that she was entirely innocent, possibly even a victim herself_

_On a reinvestigation of the crime scene recently, Aurors were startled to find a symbol commonly used by the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald painted on the side of a barn. It was identified by Albus Dumbledore, a professor at Hogwarts who took an interest in the case and promoted its reexamination, and who is known to be openly fighting against Grindelwald._

"_Having taught Morena Serran at Hogwarts, I doubted her to be capable of such a heinous crime," Dumbledore told reporters. "She was a well behaved student who did well in all of her classes, rather quiet, and seemed to be quite kind to her peers. I didn't believe that she had murdered her parents, and I am inclined to believe that she is merely in hiding because she is afraid that, like many Dark Wizards of this age, she would be prosecuted without a trial if she ventured into the public's eye."_

_On further investigation, a message from Grindelwald himself was discovered inside the house, on the table in the kitchen. The house itself had been thoroughly investigated, and Aurors took it to mean that Grindelwald had returned to the house for some reason. The letter stated that Morena Gaunt was alive. He admitted to the crimes in the letters, stating that the family was uncooperative with him, but that Morena Gaunt escaped._

"_There is no telling why he might have confessed like this, but it seems that Grindelwald purposely leaves clues wherever he goes," Anthony Fledger, one of the investigating aurors, stated. "I've been cooperating with the Bulgarian Ministry for Magic since he began his conquest of his. This definitely wasn't Morena Serran pretending to be him to have suspicion taken from her. It's Grindelwald."_

_Further investigations show no (Continued on page 6A)_

Morena tossed that newspaper next to her and scrambled for the next one. There was a small article on the side of the paper with a title reading, "Minister of Magic plans public apology on Christmas Eve for mistake in suspicions in the 'Farmhouse Massacre.'"

She looked at the next paper, which covered the "public apology," in which he asked Morena herself to come to the Ministry in person to give any information she could to help catch her parents' killer, but that she would not be forced there to give her testimony if she was seen in public, and she had the right to choose whether or not to testify. The Minister was Harold Marcus, and he was highly regarded as one of the best Ministers to have reigned, particularly on terms of keeping his word.

So Morena was free, for the first time in _months_. Despite knowing it was the person that had made her the subject of suspicion in the first place that put an end to it, she couldn't help but smile to herself a bit.

––

Morena was finally able to return to Little Hangleton on the last day of December, though a reluctant trip it was. She Apparated to the edge of the woods and waited there, concealed by the shadows of the forest from any passersby, as she waited for some sign of life within or outside of the small house. She didn't wait for long, for she had arrived at eleven and with a small _pop!_ three people appeared on the doorstep of the house: two ministry officials and disgruntled-looking Marvolo Gaunt. After saying something to the man very quickly, the Ministry officials Disapparated. Marvolo Gaunt entered his house. Morena waited a few minutes for a sign that she could go in.

A yell of anger a few minutes later was that sign – he had found Merope's letter.

Without so much as bothering to ask for permission to enter (as witches and wizards were obligated to do upon Apparating), Morena Disapparated from the forest and reappeared in the house. The monkey-like man turned on his heal at the sound to see a girl pointing a wand at him, a girl that couldn't have been any older than his own daughter. His suspicion was instant, and quite correct: this had been _her_ doing.

"You," he snarled, pointing at her. "I know who you are."

"That's nice, now let's get this over with."

"What have you done with my daughter!" It was less of a question and more of a demand.

"I believe the question is what did you do to her? And I can answer it. You drove her mother to suicide and then turned the poor girl into your servant. Not very fatherly of you." Morena shook herself mentally – she wasn't here to scold him about Merope, she had more important things she had to do. She didn't want to, but what else was there? "And that's not why I'm here anyway."

His eyes turned from a surprised sort of anger to a dark, sinister rage. "You're here for my family's ring." He smiled, but it wasn't a smile of kindness at all. "You aren't getting it. My son is tucked away in Azkaban, a prison just as hard to break into as it is to break out of. I thought this might happen, so I visited the boy before I left and left the ring in his hands. If you want to get it, you'll have to get past the dementors there." Morena swore under her breath; Grindelwald wasn't going to be very happy about that. "So, what then? Going to kill me so I won't run and tell the Ministry that the last of the Serran family isn't as innocent as they've been led to believe?" Morena continued pointing her wand at him, but didn't say a word. Poison was out of the question, he would be too suspicious of anything she would offer him to drink at this point. But killing him like _this_ – it would split her soul in two. She had done a report on Horcruxes for Defense Against the Dark Arts in her seventh year at Hogwarts and nearly gotten sick researching them. She didn't know how she planned to kill this man.

Perhaps that was why Grindelwald used the methods he had in killing her parents? It was gruesome, but it got the job done without worrying about the agony of having a soul ripped into pieces. But doing that, then they'd suspect he'd been murdered and not just dead from a heart attack or a stroke. Furthermore, poison could be detected, so it would have been pointless even if she _had_ brought it with her. This was going to be hard.

"You know, with the way you slaughtered your parents, I'm surprised you're –"

"I didn't _touch_ my parents," said Morena through gritted teeth. "I found them when I got home and left before the Ministry could show up and accuse me, you son of a bitch!"

Morena felt something in her mind she was familiar with by now. Grindelwald was listening in on her thoughts again from wherever the hell he was, and she absolutely hated it. She had to refrain from rolling her eyes, and there was a scream of frustration just waiting to come from her lips. She swallowed it quickly.

_Checking up on me, are you?_ Morena thought, still glaring at Marvolo Gaunt. _Well, I'm not doing so bloody well. Looks like you'll probably have to kill me._

"_Ah, you've learned to identify when someone else has entered your mind. That's the first step of learning Occlumency, you may be able to block me out entirely soon,"_ came the replying voice.

_So you're just going to ignore what I said about killing me. Wonderful. If you're attempting to give me a second chance, it's pointless. I'm standing here in front of Gaunt. He still has a dagger, if I'm not mistaken. It's he kills me or you do. Either way, I'm killed and Gaunt is killed._

There was a pause in which she heard no reply in her mind, and then she felt him withdraw from her mind entirely. "Bloody menace…" she mumbled under her breath. "All right, look here, Gaunt," she snapped at the old man standing in front of her, who had pulled a dagger from his pocket as she silently stood. "I'm not in this alone. I was ordered to be here. I'm either going to be killed by you or someone else, and I'm not out to kill anyone. See?" She stowed her wand away in her pocket and held out her arms in surrender. "I'm not killing you. I'm supposed to, but I'm not. I don't see the point in ripping my soul to shreds for someone that I hate ten times as much as you hate Muggles. So you know what? I'm leaving."

And, with that, she Disapparated on the spot. She appeared again on the couch in her living room, and she wasn't surprised that Grindelwald appeared in the floor a few moments later, wand in hand, standing in front of the coffee table and looking extremely annoyed. That surprised her; the look wasn't angry, just very annoyed.

"I somehow had a feeling you wouldn't follow orders," he said. "Aside from your constant protest, of course. I've worked with others who would constantly protest about the work I assigned them and still end up doing it in the end out of fear of losing their lives."

"For _once_ in your life would you just shut up?" Morena snapped, pushing the coffee table into his knees as she stood up. "If you're going to kill me, do it _now_. I don't want to have to sit here and listen to you make a bloody speech first. I don't want to hear anything except the incantation and the green sparks coming at me. I don't _want_ to die, but as it's my only option now, I may as well accept that it's going to happen. I don't care what you have to say, you son of a bitch, just get it over with!"

She crossed her arms indignantly. Grindelwald examined her for a moment, no doubt debating on whether to actually follow her instruction and get it over with or continue on with his speech, definitely taking in the anger in her voice and possibly the slight fear behind it (which she hoped wasn't _too_ prominent). She continued to glare at him. It wasn't until she was about to open her mouth and speak again that he decided to take any action.

And then she found a wand pointed between her eyes. Grindelwald's eyes were narrowed slightly, though he still looked more annoyed than angered. Morena really wasn't sure if that was for the better or the worse. "You should have just done as you were told."

"Did you forget the curse or something?" asked Morena grudgingly. "I'm about to go cross-eyed with that bloody thing there."

He still didn't say the incantation. As Morena looked at him, glared, glowered, she was almost sure she sensed why he was annoyed instead of angry. He'd definitely been through this before with forced followers, definitely killed them, but they had acted differently.

"No one has ever begged you to kill them, have they?" she asked, raised her eyebrows (only momentarily, as that _did_ make her go cross-eyed). "You're used to people begging for mercy. For one more chance, _begging_ to be left alive, promising they'll do whatever you say if you let them live. Isn't that right?" A flicker of anger alerted her that she was most likely correct. "Ah, that's it. When you kill people, you want them to beg for their lives. That has to be it. You're not used to the opposite, so you don't know –"

He cut her short when he swore under his breath. His next few movements were so quick that she wouldn't have known what was going on if she had blinked. He quickly pulled his wand back, stowed it away in a pocket inside his cloak, grabbed her arm, and Disapparated.

She was quite surprised when they both reappeared just outside of Marvolo Gaunt's house.


	7. Guilt

_Over halfway done with both the final chapter and the epilogue for this fic, so anyone reading it (though I know there aren't many who are) can rest assured that this fic will be finished._

_I'm pausing **Second Heir** and **A Gaunt Tale** until I finish this one. Since they're part of a series, I'm going to be doing them IN ORDER so I don't reveal too many spoilers for each one by writing them all at the same time.'_

_Oh, also working on a satire fic about Voldemort, which was inspired by a sign reading "Riddles Pecans" that I saw set up in front of a farm in Saluda, South Carolina. Not sure what the title will be, so I still have to think of one._

_Anyway, here's Chapter 7. Sorry for the cliffhanger on Chapter 6, just felt like building suspense XP_

* * *

Looking back and forth between the house and the man that had just Apparated her there, Morena felt like screaming in frustration. Did Grindelwald think he could convince her to kill Gaunt if he threatened her right there, telling her she had a second chance if she did kill him? What in the world was he planning? The questions that raced through her mind didn't seem to help her at all. The world was going mad and she was stuck in the middle of it all. And now Grindelwald was walking towards Gaunt's house in almost the manner of a child who hadn't gotten his way in begging for a new toy. He turned when he reached the door, eyes mad and animalistic, and a thought that surely couldn't have been her own

(_Get over here now or you'll regret it._)

rang in her mind, even in her ears; she could clearly hear it though it hadn't been spoken aloud. She stared back at Grindelwald insolently. "If you're not going to kill me, then what reason have I got to obey you?" she yelled in his direction, though he was more than close enough to hear her if she had said it in a talking tone. Morena couldn't remember a time she had been more perturbed, any other person that had ever succeeded in making her so angry.

"There are some things worse than death," he said, in a calm tone of voice that didn't at all match his current appearance, one of such anger that Morena had only seen in one place before in her life. She had heard that very same sentence spoken before, though in a much louder, angrier tone, just before seeing a jet of red sparks hit her mother square in the stomach.

Morena flinched, pushing the memory from her mind, and her feet carried her forward without her permission (and she almost wanted to yell at their sudden insubordination, though she knew it was her own subconscious doing it). She reached the door and kept her head turned away.

"You're a bloody bastard," she said.

"So I've been told." He knocked on the door three times, quite loudly.

"I hope a bunch of Muggles spot you here and haul you off to burn you at the stake or hang you or whatever they do with wizards after taking their wands away."

"The same would happen to you."

"And I was prepared to die from the moment I returned to that damned cottage in the middle of nowhere," Morena reminded him. "You'll get yours one day. You _will_. I doubt it'll be from me, but you're not going to last. Just like Emeric the Evil and Godelot and Barnabas Deverill, all of them, you'll make it no farther than any of them did. And I hope it'll all end soon."

He knocked even more loudly on the door, bashing the wood with his fist nearly hard enough to knock it open. "I believe it's my turn to ask you to keep your mouth shut," he said grudgingly. "As I've already mentioned, there are things worse than death. One of them could easily be done now, one I'm _sure_ you're familiar with. The other would involve me locating your dear friend Merope Gaunt." Morena felt one of her fists clench, but instantly thought better of it. "I see that pressed a button. You'll want to step back from the door."

Morena did as instructed, and Grindelwald stepped back far enough to fire a spell at the door, which promptly blew it open, but not off of its hinges. Inside the front room, in the middle of the front room, Marvolo Gaunt was standing. A look of surprise formed on his face when he saw Grindelwald, no doubt having had expected to have seen only Morena again, only the girl too afraid to fire a curse at him, only the girl who had helped his daughter escape his grasp. Grindelwald, though still seldom heard of outside of Bulgaria (and Morena assumed this was only because he covered his tracks well), was definitely renowned all over the Wizarding World by this point, so no doubt Gaunt had gotten quite a surprise in seeing the man himself.

"Grindelwald," he said blankly. "Gellert Grindelwald. And _you_," he added, seeing Morena standing in the doorway. "This is who you were working for! What interest of yours is the Peverell ring?" he demanded of Grindelwald suddenly. "What need do you have for it!"

"Forgive me, but I must ask you, Gaunt, if you are really in any state at all to be demanding answers from me?" said Grindelwald, his politeness quite unnerving for some offbeat reason. "You're an old man now. Both of your children are grown. They are what Salazar Slytherin's everlasting bloodline depends upon now, only them. And one of them has already taken to the Muggle filth that roams these roads, run off with Tom Riddle, and will no doubt have his child. A half-blooded heir to Slytherin could hardly be called an heir, could it?"

Morena blinked a few times, surveying the scene. Grindelwald, who had come here so angered, seemed to be quite content now with speaking in a civilized manner with Marvolo Gaunt. It was almost like he had siphoned his anger off into Gaunt to get rid of it, to grow calm again. It was a strange thing, no magic involved at all. It seemed almost like some deranged sort of therapy, turning monster back into man (though the man in this case was less than a step from his monster counterpart at any given moment), making the impossible into the possible. It made no sense at all.

"You… you be quiet, you ignorant man, it was _her_ that did it!" Gaunt said, his voice gaining volume with each word as he pointed at Morena. "_Her!_ I taught my daughter only the spells that she needed to keep the house in order, only the potions she needed to make in case of dire emergency, it was _this_ girl that came while I was gone to corrupt her into leaving!"

"Merope Gaunt isn't the subject in question," said Grindelwald, calmly waving a dismissive hand. "No, most certainly not. And _she_ will be dealt with," he added, his voice growing annoyed again for a moment. "The subject at hand is that ring, and the fact that you no longer have it on your person. I can see that for myself. I'm sure you know what it means for you?"

"Considering you had one of your cronies already go through this with me once, I'm quite sure I do know. I'm an old man anyway, as you said, and will most likely die without Merope or Morfin here to help me. However," Gaunt said, his monkey-like, wrinkled face glaring into Grindelwald's, "I'll die happy knowing you won't get your hands on my ancestors' ring."

"Truly honorable sentiments for a man about to be killed. It might hurt a bit," he added, still calmly. "I'd rather anyone that finds you determine that you died of heart failure rather than murder."

Before Gaunt could so much as open his mouth to reply to this, Grindelwald had sent a jet of red sparks soaring towards the old man's chest, towards his heart. Morena recognized the curse all to well, and flinched and turned her head when Marvolo Gaunt fell to the floor. She could hear sounds that she associated all to well with the pain of the Cruciatus Curse, of twisting, of joints snapping, of a person writhing on a floor in desperate pain, wishing it would end – and it did. Only a few moments later, moments that felt like hours to Morena, it ended. She looked back reluctantly at the patch of floor where Marvolo Gaunt had stood less than a minute ago, where he now lay with wide, open eyes, a limp hand over his chest, and his eyes wide in either pain or horror – maybe (probably) both. Morena looked at Grindelwald at this.

"Heart attack," he said, obviously satisfied with the result. "It was the Cruciatus Curse, I could tell you recognized the effects, but he had a weak heart, which meant one blow to the chest would –"

"You're not human, are you?" asked Morena. "I'm honestly curious to hear your answer."

"Is that so?"

Now that his outlet was no longer, she could see the anger building back up in Gellert Grindelwald as though someone had drilled a small hole in the top of his head and began pouring it in through a funnel. She had not only insulted him, but also interrupted him, both at once, two things he absolutely hated. He turned to face her now, pointing his wand towards her heart. She managed to keep her fear stowed away for the time – he hadn't killed her yet, so was he even actually going to? It didn't seem so. Things weren't always what they seemed, but something odd was at play here. She wasn't entirely sure what, but she was fairly sure she was safe, for whatever reason.

"I hope you've gotten things _straight_," he said through gritted teeth, his eyes narrowing slightly, but holding onto their crazed lunatic look. "I do. Did Gaunt have any issues with dying? He said he'd die happy knowing I couldn't get to the Peverell ring. For someone of my status to be reluctant to kill someone begging to be killed or begging for mercy, or even someone indifferent to the subject, would make me weaker than the fools at the Ministry of Magic who are out to apprehend rather than to kill. I kill those who hinder me, regardless of their views on the subject of death. Do you understand that?"

Morena blinked, and took a step forward herself. "Then kill me. Go on. Oh, you know what? I _dare_ you to. Going to refuse a dare? That would be rather chicken for someone of _your status_." And the anger was being poured even faster through the funnel now. Morena wasn't even sure what she was doing. This was as close to poking a lion in its eye with as stick as she could get without being devoured or at least killed. She shouldn't be pushing it. She really shouldn't. "I wouldn't think that the great Grindelwald would be too chicken to kill an eighteen year old girl who can barely _watch_ a person be killed, much less kill someone herself. So why not do it? Why not –"

But she was cut off as a jet of red sparks hit her in her stomach. Through the blinding pain of being contorted into forms even her snake form couldn't handle without snapping in two, she wondered why the sparks hadn't hit her heart, where he had been aiming. The pain, the feeling of being ripped in two by being stretched at either end of her body, stopped within seconds, and she remained a crumpled heap on the floor, afraid that moving might reveal broken limbs, or that she wasn't even in one piece any longer. She opened her eyes a little to look at herself. There were no bones at odd angles and she was certainly not torn in half, but she was still afraid to move. She faintly saw the tall form standing next to her crouch down.

"As I said," he told her, a bit more calmly that before (and Morena was beginning to suspect that he might have some sort of strange split-personality disorder), "there are worse things than death." He stood back up didn't move from where he stood. "Up. You're not done with your job yet, Gaunt didn't have the ring. Or just stay here until you feel like moving and Apparate back to your headquarters. I don't particularly feel like waiting, and you will very much regret it if I have to come looking for you."

Morena managed to work herself into a kneeling position in the middle of the floor with much effort, her muscles having tensed themselves to a nearly immobile state. She glared at the man standing a few feet in front of her, at Gellert Grindelwald. "You know something?"

"I know quite a lot. Feel free to enlighten me on anything you think I might not."

She stood back up and glared at him with all the hatred she had ever felt towards anyone or anything in the world. "I think I'd have been better off if you had just killed me in the beginning." And with that, she Disapparated before he could get a word out.

Her destination was her "headquarters", and her feet landed firmly on the hardwood floor in front of them. The owl perching on the fireplace flew over and landed on the back of the couch to her right, and Morena absently stroked the feathers on the top of Marcy's head a couple times before sitting down, still feeling rather tense. It was no wonder Grindelwald was calm again if she was angry. She had been the one to provoke him, but none of this was her fault to begin with. She hadn't asked him to kill her parents. She hadn't asked him to slaughter them like meat. She hadn't asked to be left alive. She hadn't asked for any of this.

All she wanted was to go home and find her mother and father fighting like they always had been, arguing and screaming and yelling, all of the tears and negative feelings in tact. She used to wish they would both just shut _up_, that they would get along and be quiet for at least long enough for her to do her summer homework… but now that they had been silenced, she wanted nothing more than for them to speak again, regardless of the brutal tones they took with each other. It was terrible, it was selfish to want her mother to come back to life and have to go through all of that again, but it was better than _this_.

Negative feelings were definitely better than none at all.

She leaned forward to stare at her knees, where her elbows were firmly planted, and she squeezed hard at her temples with her palms to thwart any oncoming headache. She heard Marcy give an almost sympathetic hoot from behind her, then ruffle her feathers. She sighed to herself.

"At least I have _some_ company worth staying here," she mumbled to herself with a glance back at the feathery little butterball. "I'd be happier with the other company if it would drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of the sitting room floor…"

She shut her eyes and remembered the look of utter emptiness on Marvolo Gaunt's face after his unkindly induced heart attack and opened her eyes again. When she heard the swishing sound of a cloak, she was alerted instantly that she was no longer alone with her thoughts. She felt her fingers curl a little, tempted to detach her hands so they could crawl across the room and strangle him, but she managed to hold onto them. Taking in slow and deep breaths in an attempt to regain calm, she heard him stop in front of the table. Before he could speak, she chose to.

"Why didn't you just kill me?" she asked. She had meant the question to be forceful, but it had passed through her lips as no more than a meager whisper. This only furthered her frustration. "Is this the punishment I'm getting for going against you, being forced into servitude until I die a completely natural death? If it is, you've bloody outdone yourself, as I honestly couldn't think of worse torture if I tried."

"I don't have the ring in my possession yet," he said, "so I still require your assistance –"

"Like hell, you do!" said Morena, gaining her voice back in an instant and looking up at him, her hands falling onto the side of the couch limply with a couple muffled _thud_s. "Like _hell_." She stood up. "Are you having an identity crisis?" she asked incredulously. "Let me help you out, then. I'll be happy to, in fact. Your name is Gellert Grindelwald. You were expelled from Durmstrang in Bulgaria and had some pretty screwed up ideas about what the Wizarding World should be like, with wizards conquering Muggles, but you were just smart enough and powerful enough to convince others that you were right, and you're more than capable of working with them without people like Morena Serran – Irish farm girl, for reference, whose parents were killed in a bloody mangled mess, who you decided to enslave – without people like _me_ helping you! You don't _need me_ to help you with anything, you want to punish me for being a coward and not killing Marvolo Gaunt as I was told to!"

He crossed his arms and looked at her in a sort of contemplative way, dangerously close to amused (dangerous for him because he might be killed if he laughed). "Coward?" he said curiously. "I wouldn't hardly say that. I'm most definitely not thrilled that you didn't obey orders, but your refusal was the sort of idiotic bravery often exhibited by those of the Gryffindor House at Hogwarts. You knew you were going to die, and you'd rather face death yourself than kill another. That's not a trait many people have. I can't be sure if it's more of a blessing or a curse."

Morena continued glaring at him. "You're still a bloody monster."

"Unfortunately, incorrect again," he said, shaking his head. "If I weren't entirely human, you wouldn't be alive right now."

"My parents," said Morena, her voice shaking in anger and her fists clenched tightly at her sides. "If you were human, I wouldn't have walked into my house after finishing school and found them lying on the floor practically in _pieces!_" She saw a flicker of something that definitely wasn't anger, but decided to ignore it and continue anyway. "The way you killed them looked like an animal had done it. A bear. A lion. A wolf. I don't know. But it wasn't… it just _wasn't_. I don't know." She sat back down on the sofa. "I don't. You're bloody mad." She shook her head, looking at her knees with wide eyes, unable to even string the proper words together into a sentence. "You can't be human."

There was silence and no movement for a long moment, none except from Marcy, who ruffled her feathers and hooted again. Then, without bothering to look up, Morena listened to the sound of footsteps as they moved away from the table and towards the middle of the room. "If you choose to believe it or not, it wasn't my intention to kill them," he said quietly. "If anything at all, I'm too human. My inability to control my own anger is what caused me to be expelled from Durmstrang twenty-five years ago. It's also what caused me to lose a good friend, only months later. And it is, indeed, the reason your parents are gone. If I didn't feel guilt as any other human does, you'd be dead, and I would have let you stay the main suspect in their murders, what other reason would I have had to return to that house?"

"Just leave me be," said Morena quietly, though loud enough to be heard over the complete silence in the sitting room. "Please."

Another moment of silence, then in a more official tone, Morena heard, "Very well. Be ready with a plan six months from now to get the ring from Morfin Gaunt."

"Fine."

When Morena finally looked up five minutes later from her silent thoughts, she was in the sitting room alone. Alone again.

And again, the silence pressed against her eardrums in that maddeningly loud manner that it always seemed to.


	8. Creeping Death

_Finished writing the story!!!! There are twelve chapters in all, if you include the epilogue. I never meant for it to be very long, as I started writing it mostly as a prequal to **Second Heir**, but I just got really into it. I'll start posting on **Second Heir** again as soon as I finish this._

_I think I'll probably post an update per day._

_Any comments are always appreciated._

* * *

Eleven and a half months had passed since that one talk with Grindelwald, nearly a year, and Morena had chosen not to bring it up again in that time. It had been strictly business from then on out. Indeed, she had managed to "befriend" Morfin Gaunt, in a manner of speaking. She despised him, but it had seemed the only way when he returned to his home in June to find the house empty of his father. Morena, as a snake, had explained the event to him in lies. She told Morfin she had seen him have a heart attack from a small hole in the wall in the side of the house as a snake.

After listening to her entire false recount of the tragedy, he had taken the liberty of telling her that no snakes were capable of intelligent conversation, and he therefore knew she was an animagus. Then he threatened to nail her to the door if she didn't show herself. So, though she had strictly been instructed not to, she had done so. Psychotic or not, he apparently had at least a moderate IQ, despite his lack of common sense, or he wouldn't have thought to blackmail her like that. Then he demanded her to state her purpose. Reluctantly, she had come up with the only lie she could at that moment. She could remember her own words clearly in her mind, every single one of them.

"The Gaunt family and the Serran family – we're dying out," she had said, praying that her acting skills wouldn't fail her. Grindelwald had asked her what her alternate plan would be if her initial one failed. When she failed to come up with any ideas, he had told her what she would do. She even had to agree with him; it seemed to be the only option. "I spoke with your father about it before – before _that_ happened, just after he returned from Azkaban. He agreed to it."

Morena had never expected it herself, and the only part of her future she had thought about for after Hogwarts was what her career might be. Now, though, things were being brought into perspective. The odds were that if her parents were still alive, she would have ended up being married off to preserve her herritage anyway, her pureblood herritage. They weren't the Muggle hating types, her parents, but they were proud to say that they hadn't had a Muggle, Half-blood, Muggleborn, or Squib in their family for as far back as they could be traced. They were civil with Muggles, but they didn't want their daughter marrying one.

How proud they would have been to find out that she was not only going to be helping preserve the Serran family's noble herritage, but also that of the Gaunt's. She didn't want to. Morena didn't even want to be married. But now, there Morena Serran sat, five and a half months following her first official introduction to Morfin Gaunt, married and two weeks pregnant (though not particularly happy about it, it would ensure that she couldn't be forced to kill Morfin Gaunt for fear of the safety of the child – she despised Morfin Gaunt, but she didn't feel she could kill another human being no matter how hard she tried). It was the only way, the only way to get that bloody ring. At this point, she wanted to retrieve it and stomp it into the ground, in spite of both Gellert Grindelwald and Morfin Gaunt. Both of them, _both of them_. Looking at either of them lately made her feel physically sick, and she _hated_ it.

She had been constantly putting on the act of an obedient wife for the past _four months_. Morena couldn't stand it. She felt she was nearing her breaking point, but stressing out over it could hurt the child. Despite feeling as though she were carrying the child of Satan himself, it was still a child, still _her_ child. It felt almost unnatural thinking of it as an "it," as _it_ was a human being, or would be eventually. She had never once thought of having a child before, so she didn't know what to call it. The word "it" made it seem like something inhuman….

The worst of it all was that since Morena was deemed innocent by the Ministry of Magic, the Wizengamot had decided that she should inherit her parents' belongings, money included. Her father hadn't been a poor man, despite his lifestyle, which meant that there was enough money so that neither her nor Morfin needed to work… which meant she was stuck with the psychotic man twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

And with every minute she spent with him, the likeliness that she might be able to commit murder increased little by little. She halfway looked forward to meeting with Grindelwald to discuss how plans were going with this lately. Morfin didn't treat her any better than his father had no doubt treated his mother, than Morena's own father had treated her mother. However, Morena was different. She was willing to fight back. She hadn't been hit since she found out she was pregnant, however, which was both a good sign and a bad sign. Morfin Gaunt wanted the child to live, but the odds were that he wanted it to live so that he could teach it to act exactly like him towards anyone who wasn't a pureblood witch or wizard.

Now Morena sat on the couch in headquarters, contemplating all of these changes that seemed to have occurred so suddenly over the past year, completely changing her life. She wasn't a teenager just out of Hogwarts anymore. She would be twenty years old soon, in four short months that seemed to be approaching quite quickly. It seemed the things that people always looked forward too the least always seemed to come so much more quickly than the things they wanted. Morena hated the idea of turning twenty. It was like admitting that time was slowly defeating her. It would mean that she wasn't a teenager anymore. Though she was legally an adult in the magical world when she turned seventeen, she still considered herself a teenager. Once the number two cropped up in front of her age, she would be an adult. Morena wasn't sure _how_ to be an adult, and she didn't want to be one. It was a little too late, of course. She was married and she was going to have a child. She may as well have been one.

Morena managed to shake those thoughts from her head. The more she thought about it, the closer the end of it all seemed. One of her teachers in Hogwarts had once said that for every second that passes, you're a second closer to dying. It had been the first line of the opening speech of her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for her first year class, before going on to tell them that the course could help them to delay the inevitable if it made an attempt to find them early. He had been one of the teachers that had been there for ages, and according to the older students, he gave the same speech at the beginning of every year. Morena guessed he had taken years to perfect it and just didn't want to start over new.

Ever since she had begun working for Grindelwald, Morena could always feel the cold and clammy hand of Death reaching out to her. Sometimes it seemed so close that she could almost feel the cloaked man standing over her, the cold metal blade of his sickle held to her neck as if to say, "One wrong move and you belong to me, sister." She understood better than ever the words of Professor Callamus, that Death crept closer to you with every second that passed. Of course, she disagreed; in her case, Death wasn't creeping closer. He was keeping at a constant distance with her, just out of sight, so he could creep behind her when he saw her in what seemed to be a predicament that could give him an opportunity to claim another soul.

Morena looked up from the sound of a swishing cloak at the very reason she was at that Headquarters. Grindelwald was walking over to the chair when he glanced over and stopped for a moment. "Is there any reason you have a black eye?"

"Fashion statement," she said sarcastically. "I punched myself in the face because I thought purple was a nice color. What do _you_ think?"

"I think it probably has something to do with you living in such close quarters with your arch nemesis," he said, taking his seat in the chair.

"Oh, no worries," said Morena, waving a dismissive hand. "He looks twice as bad as I do right now." It wasn't a lie, but it was only true because Morena had hit him over the head with a shovel she had conjured.

"No doubt. Have you made any progress at all?" he asked. "I somehow doubt it, and killing him will obviously be out of the question for you at this point."

"The child would probably be better off without that feckless ingrate," said Morena, "but I'm afraid everything you put me through might render the child and orphan before he reaches his first birthday if I kill his father. Most unfortunate, he makes me grow more and more homicidal with every passing minute, I probably won't mind the idea of killing him within another year. I honestly wish my first plan had worked and I could have just stayed a snake until he set the ring down somewhere."

"And he never does?"

Morena shook her head no. "He never takes it off. I don't blame him, his father wasn't kidding when he said that people have offered a fortune for it, I've seen it. It's mad. I can see why you'd rather just steal it. More trouble, but he's turned down offers that could practically buy an entire continent. Which is actually what this is about," she added, pointing at the bruise around her eye. "I figured if I could get him to take it off and hand it to the wizard offering the money to allow him to examine it, then I could knock it out of his hand and take it."

"I did have a slight feeling he wouldn't ever take the ring off. With the way he idolized his father, he's bound to protect it with his life, it seems the only option would be to kill him, which won't be done," he added, obviously sensing that Morena was about to protest. She nodded.

"Good. I'm not up to the idea _quite_ yet. I despise the man, but the only things I'm capable of killing without guilt are creatures with six or more legs, particularly ones with wings or ones that shoot web out of their –"

"Do you have any alternate plans?" Business, as always. Straight to business.

"He has a wand now. There was a period of waiting before he could get another, but he was allowed to. If I attempt to attack him for the ring, he'll fight back and then kick me out, deeming me useless as a follower of any sort and practically leaving me to be killed." She held her tongue before any other words

(_which would be much better than my current situation…)_

could roll off of her tongue. "If I could, I'd like to wait until the child is old enough to understand the situation."

"And you do realize how far away that time would be? It would have to age to its late teenage years before that could happen, and – though I'd rather not say it – there is at least the slightest chance that I could be caught by the aurors out searching for me by then."

"Especially with Albus Dumbledore helping them." She thought she saw him flinch, but she didn't dare ask why. Probably just the light playing tricks on her eyes. "You're smart enough, sure, but I don't think anyone's smarter than old Professor Dumbles. He's a bit on the nutty side, but most highly intelligent people are. You've got the 'Greater Good' thing going on, Dumbledore… is just mad. Simple as that. But, I reckon you might stand a chance if you're extra careful in covering your tracks. Right now, I want to steal the ring myself just to get back at Morfin for this –" She pointed at her swollen and bruised eye, "and all the other ones. So, you should be happy. I finally have motivation in this."

He nodded. "The child complicates things. You've done a fairly well job thus far, and you would be useful for other tasks that I don't have time for myself, but… I suppose that will have to be dealt with later." His speaking seemed more rhetorical than anything at the moment, and though she knew her interrupting would only succeed in angering him, she hadn't particularly liked that last sentence of his.

"'Dealt with' how, exactly?" asked Morena, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

He recognized the rather cross tone of voice (or he had decided to invade her mind), as he said, "No need to worry, the child won't be harmed."

Morena nodded. "It'd best not be harmed. If you think you're going to go back on your word on that, think again."

"Might I remind you that you are in no position to command me?" said Grindelwald – he had perfected the falsely casual tone in a way that Morena had been trying to her whole life, and she felt a surge of annoyance at this. "You don't mind dying, but what about your dear friend Merope?"

Morena flinched. Trust Grindelwald to put _that_ back on her mind. Tom Riddle had returned to Little Hangleton to live with his parents only a few months after leaving with Merope. Merope and Morena continued to write each other, which was how Morena found out that Merope was pregnant and had decided to stop giving Tom the potion because she couldn't stand being so dishonest with him. She truly did love him, but she didn't want him to love her just because of a potion, and she told Morena that she would have rather let him go free than hold him captive for her own selfishness. She was definitely a better person than Morena, no doubt. Morena wasn't about to deny that.

But that wasn't what Grindelwald had reminded her of. He had reminded her of a much more recent letter Merope had sent her. With each letter, Merope seemed to be growing more sickly, weaker and weaker. She had little money now that Tom was gone, and she couldn't work herself after a certain time. So, the child was living off of what little food she could afford, and she was suffering through it all. She had even sold her father's locket – Slytherin's locket – to a shop in Knockturn for little more than a few galleons. The locket was worth more than enough for her to live on, but she said it was pointless.

Her exact words in her most recent letter had been, "_I honestly think I weigh less now than I did three months ago, and he should be born any day now. Don't ask me how I know it will be a boy – I'm just sure of it. But, as it is, I can feel Death closing in on me. I think he's sparing me until I can have the child, following me at a close enough distance to watch but far enough for me not to see._" Merope told her that she felt that if she _did_ make it through the birth, it would be more than enough to kill her. She had weakened.

What amazed Morena was that she planned to name him Tom Marvolo Riddle. After the two men who had rejected her for years. She claimed it was because she still loved Tom, and would always respect her father regardless of what he had done over the years. Yet again, Morena knew that she never could have had that outlook. True enough, she wanted her parents back; she would have preferred their company to Morfin Gaunt's and Grindelwald's any day. However, she would never forgive her father for anything, and she would never respect him after everything. She saw no use in denying that, it would only be lying to herself if she did.

She withdrew from her mind when she realized Grindelwald was talking again.

"… being quiet, and normally you have to struggle to keep your mouth shut."

Morena rolled her eyes and considered going back into her mind to tune him out entirely, but she just _had_ to answer. Just had to. He was right that she had a hard time keeping her mouth shut, but she would never admit to that son of a bitch that he was right about anything.

"Merope's dying anyway, so you can stop using her as blackmail against me," said Morena, glaring off at the wall. "Since Tom left, she's been alone and without a job, and she recently pawned Slytherin's locket for enough money to get her through until she could have her son, and she doesn't think she's going to survive the birth anyway. I don't see what blackmail you have against me now," she added, looking back at him. "The Cruciatus Curse? I've back talked to you hundreds of times in the past year and I haven't seen any red sparks flying towards me since. And besides, it could hurt the child if you did. And if that happened, _I'd_ kill _you_."

Though she was being dead serious, though she was sure he knew that she was being dead serious, the beginnings of a contemptuous smirk were forming on his face anyway. "I'm sure you would."

"You say it disbelievingly," said Morena, raising her eyebrows. "It's a child – _my_ child. The only time my mother _ever_ stood up to my father was the one time he hit me. Regardless of a woman's personality, they all have maternal instincts. One is to kill or at least _hurt_ anyone that harms their child. It's simple as that."

He was twirling his wand around in circles in one hand, watching the motion of the carved mahogany in an utterly disinterested manner. "And yet you have thoughts that it's the child of Satan himself," he said.

Morena's gaze turned instantly cold. "They're just thoughts, that's all they are, they don't account for anything. They're not even voluntary ones at that; it's my subconscious making me think those things. Any woman forced to marry Morfin Gaunt would wonder the same thing. If you bothered to read anything else, you'd see the more alert and aware side of my mind disagreeing entirely. The child might turn out just like its father, it might not, I don't know, but regardless –"

"You won't care, you'll love it all the same, yes, yes, of course." His voice sounded slightly annoyed, and she wasn't going to ask why. She honestly didn't _care_ why. "Now, I unfortunately don't have all day," he said, standing. "The Elder Wand has managed to change hands yet again, and all my research proves to have been useless. I'll have to search for all over again. I'd like to find it as quickly as possible, so," and at that, he stood, "I'll be leaving now."

"Yeah," said Morena. "I think I'll be staying the night here as I don't much feel like being commanded around like a slave."

He Disapparated without a sarcastic or sincere goodbye, which had been more common ever since last December. That was one month she sincerely wished she could forget. It seemed like all of her Decembers would be. Last one, listened to an old man be killed and got Crucio-ed herself. This one, she was pregnant with the spawn of Satan and her only friend was going to die, her son to be placed in a Muggle orphanage. When his magic started to kick in he'd be ridiculed and mocked, which would be enough for any wizard or witch to develop feelings of extreme hatred towards Muggles, even if they didn't know that they were a wizard or a witch, even if they didn't know what Muggles even were. Tom Marvolo Riddle would turn out to be like his Uncle Morfin and his Grandfather Marvolo, and nothing like his mother because he would hate the Muggle children at that orphanage if they tormented him for his magic.

And for what? So he could escape to Hogwarts when he was eleven and be tormented further? No… he would fit into Slytherin just fine if he developed those feelings. Her child would as well. Her child and Merope's son would probably turn out to be best friends and never even know that they're actually cousins. Morena couldn't help but smile at this a little, in spite of her rather pessimistic mood. They would be the exact opposites of their tolerant mothers, and for that reason they would get along well. Same age, probably same house, probably same feelings of hatred towards the Muggle society, towards Muggleborns and wizards and witches who really didn't mind them.

And at this thought, Morena laughed, in more a resigned than an amused manner. The poor children… each wouldn't even know who the other was, and Morena was powerless to help them with the way things were at the moment. And if her situation didn't improve, she might not even be around when her son or daughter entered Hogwarts.

But _God_ she hoped it wouldn't come to that…


	9. Déjà Vu

_Chapter 9, only a few more to go._

* * *

Upon hearing a loud, utterly terrified scream of _"Muuummmmyyy!"_ from the next room over, Morena dropped the plate she had been scrubbing down with a sponge on the floor in surprise. She didn't even think to repair it before she turned to head into the back room of the house, but she wasn't able to move a step forward before a midget collided with her legs, scrambled behind her, and wrapped his arms around them as though letting go might be the death of him. She looked over her shoulder at her son before reaching down and pulling his arms away to turn around and kneel down in front of him. She felt the regular twinge of déjà vu surge through her upon looking at her son.

The boy looked just like her father.

It hadn't been quite as prominent when Timothy Morfin Gaunt was first born, but he was two years old now, toddling around and being a regular menace, babbling like a baboon with a few actual words mixed in occasionally – though he could speak well enough to understand when he wasn't quite so hyper. His features were becoming more distinguished, and Morena was quite happy to see that he looked nothing like his own father. He did have Morena's eyes (though they might have been a bit wider, they were the same general shape) and hair _color_, but everything else was her father. The same type of hair – straight, almost always neat regardless of how long he ran around, fast-growing, and not as flat as Morena's. Like many newborn babies, he had lost the little bit of dark brown hair he had when he was born only a short time later, and his hair began to come in darker and thicker after that. He had the same nose, the same smile, and the same turquoise eyes. That must have been a dominant trait in her father's family, as Morena had the same color as her father, who had the same color as his mother. Wherever it had come from, it definitely wasn't recessive.

Despite resembling his mother's roots more, Morena knew the boy had already taken to his father more than her. She hated it more than anything, but she didn't protest. If she protested, she would have been made to leave. If she left, she couldn't get the ring. That was still her primary focus, that bloody ring that he never took off. She hadn't grown to care about him, and she never would, but she kept her mouth shut both for the sake of her son and that ring.

The boy had gotten into a habit of dragging one of the dining chairs over to the front window of the house and clambering up onto the chair so he could look out the window, up the straight path that led to Little Hangleton. The one thing that his father hated was his strange fascination with Muggle cars – they were indeed growing more and more common with every year. He would wait by the window all day for one to drive past. Despite his father training him to hate Muggles, Timothy still seemed to find the differences between them and his own parents interesting.

Interesting, yes, but he was still uncivil with them. One of the words he had perfected _was_ "Muggle," so that was exactly what he would yell before throwing rocks at any of them. Needless to say, Morena never took him into town anymore, as he simply refused to listen to reason on the subject. His father was doing an utterly _brilliant_ job of training him. Perhaps he would see reason when he got old enough to think for himself.

Though Morena doubted this wholly.

Now, unlike his usual bright and joyful self, Timothy's eyes were wide with terror and hurt and blinking rapidly, shining tracks of tears were tracing paths across his cheeks, his bottom lip was stuck out in a slight pout, he was shaking all over… and Morena could see a red mark forming around the back of his neck, just barely from behind his hairline.

(_I really need to cut this boy's hair…_)

Morena mentally shook the random thought away and became instantly refocused.

"Oh, what happened, sweetie?" she asked – she knew what the answer would be to an extent, she just didn't know what circumstances it had happened under.

In his rapid, shaken babbling, Morena managed to catch the words "Daddy," "sleeping," and "ring."

"All right, calm down," said Morena soothingly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Now, Daddy did something?" She received two sniffles and a frantic nod in response. "Can you tell me what he did?"

Still sniffling, he turned around and lifted his hair up in the back. Morena flinched at the sight – the bright red mark shaped like a large hand that was there contrasted vividly with Timothy's rather paler complexion, making it look all the more vibrant. Morena could work it out well enough in her head. Timothy had asked his father about the ring he always wore. Morfin had told him the worst thing you could ever tell any two year old wreaker of havoc: he told his son that it had belonged to his father and not to _ever_ touch it. Timothy, as curious as any little boy would have been, had waited until his father was asleep on this particular day to sneak in and attempt to take it off his hand to examine it more closely.

Morfin had awoken to find his son with his own father's prized ring and had gotten quite angry. Timothy dropped the ring and attempted to run away, but was caught by the back of his neck. He had then yelled for his Mummy to save him, but managed to escape on his own and tackle Morena while she was in the midst of heading to the back room.

"It's all right, you can turn back around." He did so, still looking hurt and rather confused. "Now listen, sweetie; when your daddy tells you not to do something, you need to listen to him, okay?" Timothy nodded. "There, that's a good boy." She ruffled his hair.

Morena had no doubt that he wouldn't question his father's authority for a good long time after this, at least not until he was old enough to fight back. The problem was that Timothy didn't know he was doing anything wrong half the time because he hadn't been told in advance not to, and rather than just scold him for it a first time and tell him 'don't do that,' Morfin would resort immediately to corporal punishment.

"B-b-but Daddy said it belonged to my granddad," Timothy said now. "'Ow come I can't look at it? His daddy gave it to _him_!"

"Timothy…" she said with a sigh, shaking her head. She still wasn't sure if she had a hang of this parenting thing half the time, particularly not when she had to answer questions like that. "I know you're a bit young to understand, but your grandfather isn't… isn't _here_ anymore, he had to… to go away. That ring is all your father has left of him, so he's going to be careful with it."

"Will he ever let me see it?"

"Probably when you're a little older," said Morena. "He's scared you won't be as careful with it now as you would be when you get older."

"Okay…"

Within minutes, he had dragged a chair over to the window at the front of the house and was staring out the window, pressing a small bag of ice to the back of his neck, which he proclaimed to be quite sore. The worst part of it all was that this wasn't the first time it had happened. It happened before when Timothy had picked up his father's wand and decided it would be fun to attempt at a few spells with it almost six months ago. Morfin had caught him and slapped him hard enough to leave a large, palm-shaped bruise on his jaw for a week. Timothy was too young to even know that his father wasn't acting in the way the conventional parent would, so he instantly forgave him for every bump and bruise. There was absolutely no point in trying to talk to Morfin about it. She had tried to after the incident with the wand, but he refused to see reason. That was just him.

"_Car_!"

Morena looked back from the metal frying pan she had been washing and laughed a little at Timothy, who was hopping on the heals of his feet on the chair with perfected balance and pointing out the window at a passing car. He stopped for a moment and concentrated on the car. Morena gave a glance at the window herself to see Anthony Riddle's Mercedes driving along the dirt road towards town, no doubt with Tom behind the wheel.

She felt a rush of hate every time she saw that car, even though there was really no point to it. Tom Riddle hadn't chosen to run off with Merope, not really, but he still could have stayed for the child. Tom Marvolo Riddle Jr. now resided in a rundown orphanage in London. When Morena went out to buy groceries in London only a few weeks ago (she had grown tired of residents of Little Hangleton whispering about how she couldn't keep her own child under control every time she walked past them), she had walked right past that very Muggle orphanage, and there was a little boy sitting on the steps by himself, looking bored and slightly annoyed, a little boy in ragged clothes that looked so much like Tom Riddle that she had gotten that same faint feeling of déjà vu she got every time she looked at her own son and saw her father, though the boy at the orphanage definitely had Merope's paler complexion and her dark bluish-gray eyes. Morena had no doubt that he had been Merope's son, and that the poor boy didn't even have a clue as to who his parents were or if they were even alive or not.

She had walked past without saying anything. What would she have said, anyway? He had been born on the last day of December, so he had been only a month away from his third birthday when Morena had seen him there. He had looked so miserable, but Morfin had already established after finding about the existence of the child that, "Any child of that filthy Squib that sets foot in my house is going to be dead before it has the chance to blink." Morena couldn't do anything about it.

Now, with the way Morfin was, she was afraid she wouldn't even be able to do anything about her own son.

––

Hours later that day, after Timothy was in bed and fast asleep, Morena decided to lay down on the lumpy sofa in the front room with her book on Legilimency. She had begun reading into it about a month before Morfin had gotten out of Azkaban, but it wasn't anything she ever used, except maybe to annoy Grindelwald on the occasion that he let his guard down (which wasn't often). She still hadn't perfected it, but she was getting better with each book she bought from Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley.

Morfin was sitting at the dinner table. She hadn't bothered to look up to see if he was doing anything. Generally, this was her main practice time with Legilimency. The farthest away she had ever been able to use it from was between rooms of the house, so she wasn't particularly advanced yet, either. It was pointless trying to conclude anything important from thoughts from the mind of Morfin Gaunt, but it was still decent practice. Now she caught a string of thought about his ungrateful bastard of a son and his damned mother. Not surprising, as that was usually what she heard from his mind after he'd done something this stupid. Just like his father, Morfin tried to blame any and everyone else for his own errors. He was a lazy useless lump who Morena and her son easily could have gotten along without.

If it weren't for that ring, they could have left. Timothy wouldn't want to; it was his daddy, after all. It didn't matter how much Morfin batted him around, Timothy would always love his father. If Morena tried to take him away from the man, Timothy would grow to despise her quite quickly. It was bad enough that he preferred his father as it was (Morena could admit to herself that she _was_ jealous, but she also didn't want her son to look up to someone like Morfin as a role model), so she definitely didn't want to widen the rift between herself and her son. If it was going to grow any wider, it could do so on its own.

She had to be honest with herself – she halfway wished _she_ had caught Timothy with the ring. That would have been _such_ a simple solution to all of this! She wouldn't have to be sitting here thinking of some elaborate plan to make Morfin remove the ring. The best plan she had so far was "accidentally" cutting off the finger it was on the next time he bothered her about something while she was making dinner. That probably wouldn't go over so smoothly, so she was saving that as a last resort.

Morena didn't bother glancing up from her book at the sound of footsteps walking across the floor. Judging by the time – and the door shutting behind her, it only meant that she was going to be the last person left awake, and she would sleep on the couch as she had been doing for ages now –

"_Oh, you aren't going to sleep yet_."

Morena's hands flew instantly to her forehead as a reflexive reaction to the much too familiar voice. She hadn't actually met with Grindelwald in person for quite a while. Her status reports had been strictly mental for a while, and there was no doubt in her mind that that old house in the mountains she used to stay in was growing dusty and probably seemed even more desolate and less homey than it ever had before.

_And why not?_ she replied spitefully.

"_You know why. I haven't asked for a report in almost a month, in case you haven't noticed._"

_Oh, I thought it seemed a bit more peaceful in my head. The only thing to report here is a terrible bloody case of child abuse, not much else. Timothy got curious about the ring and took it while Morfin was asleep. If __**I**__ had caught him, this would be done with. Unfortunately, I was washing bloody __**dishes**__._

"_No progress, then_," came the disappointed voice in reply. "_I'm beginning to get impatient, Morena. Morfin Gaunt isn't particularly intelligent, a common fly could outsmart him at most turns._"

_Oh, thanks…. Look, it's night and I'm tired, could you just leave me alone?_

"_Fine. I will check again within a few weeks. Please continue trying to form a decent plan._"

Morena shut her eyes in agitation until she felt the extra presence leave her mind. Since she had begun studying Legilimency, she had become better at detecting it, though she was still caught off guard quite often. She had once tried to block him from entering her mind, but the block was a rather feeble attempt that he had both gotten past easily and noticed, so it was known to him at least that she was attempting to practice Occlumency. She honestly didn't care. Nothing inside her head was his business, but he sifted through it all the time anyway, so it didn't matter if she cared or not.

Morena finished the chapter on long distance uses for Legilimency and set it on the splintering coffee table next to her and tucked her hands behind her head. At least one good thing had come out of all of this; she couldn't have ever asked for a better child. She never thought she wanted one. She _still_ didn't want to be married, but having a son made it seem at least a bit easier to bear. It made it so every doubt she had about all of this was quashed by the thought of how Timothy would get along with his father with her gone rather than the ring, and it seemed to be a better reason for her to want to stay at all. Had it been only for the ring, then she wouldn't have been able to stay, not for this long. She would have rather died than stayed if the only reason was that bloody ring.

Now, though, she had to stay. She had no doubt that Morfin's temperament would be a danger to Timothy's life if she left while he was still this young, that Morfin might hit him a bit too hard for doing something he shouldn't, hurt him badly enough for the damage to last for longer than just a bruise or a red mark. The boy would be in danger if she left him alone with that madman, and regardless of how much she doubted it all sometimes, no matter how much she truly wanted to leave and hide out somewhere Grindelwald couldn't find her, she couldn't bring herself to do it. It would put Timothy in greater danger than he was in even with Morena around. He was slowly but surely turning into his father's son – regardless of his strange fascination with cars, he still thought Muggles were scum because that's what his daddy told him. At this age, his mind was a sponge, and it was bound to absorb and preserve any ideas his father dumped upon it. Morena couldn't prevent that from happening. Her son would be an anti-Muggle rights activist, no doubt. She could keep him from getting hurt, however. She would kill that lunatic _ever_ gave _her_ son more than a bruise.


	10. Traitor

_And to chapter 10. One more official chapter left, then the prologue, then it's done and back to work on **Second Heir**._

* * *

It was midday, midsummer, and only a few short days after Timothy's third birthday. It was all passing by too fast, and Morena still didn't have the ring. Morfin was _still_ implanting false ideals about Muggles and witches and wizards whose bloodlines weren't entirely pure. Timothy was a little older now, more comprehending. He was growing up quickly, and Morena believed he was probably rather smart for his age. Smart or not, his mind was still in its spongiest of states, and Morfin was still pouring those horrid ideas on it for him to absorb.

Now, Morena was pacing on the floor of the front room of the little house as she listened to the voices of her son and his stupid stupid _stupid_ father drifting through the windows. Timothy was more apt to hold onto things these days. Morena's own mother had started teaching her to read at around three, if she wasn't mistaken, and Timothy would probably be learning himself in no time. For now, though, he was learning other things, things that his father held as true, things that Morena would have liked to hex him for. No three-year-old child should know the meaning of a word as hideous as "mudblood", not one, nor should they think that half-bloods are any less magical than purebloods, or that those who tolerated Muggles despite their pure herritage should be.

She was losing her temper now. It was growing harder and harder to hold onto it. Every time she heard her son use the word mudblood, she could feel a dagger so sharp that it was nearly invisible stabbing into her side, making her want to scream. It was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She couldn't bloody stand it.

Morena tugged at her hair as she debated finding the invisible dagger so she could go outside and stab Morfin through the eye with it. It was what he deserved. In fact, he deserved a hell of a lot worse than that. He deserved something she couldn't bring herself to do, a curse she couldn't bring herself to use on another living being. Avada Kedavra, she could have used. Morfin didn't deserve death, that would have been to easy, too painless. Morena still remembered, from the one time she had been hit by the Cruciatus Curse (courtesy of Gellert Grindelwald), how it had felt like someone had stabbed thousands of knives into every bit of flesh reachable, while one person took hold of her arms and the other her feet and tried to stretch her beyond her breaking point. That was exactly what that man deserved. She knew though, that in order for something like that to work, the caster of the spell had to mean it with every fabric of their being.

That was a type of thing that Morena couldn't possibly mean to do to _anyone_, no matter how well she could fathom the thought it in her mind.

Morena stopped by the counter of the kitchenette and leaned herself against it. She rested her left elbow on her right hand and chewed at her thumbnail. Her right hand clenched around the skin covering her elbow every time those _words_ drifted into her window, particularly when she heard her son's voice saying them. She could have tolerated it to a certain degree if he was older, perhaps around ten, as that would mean they were thoughts he was thinking for himself. Now, though, they were simply thoughts being implanted into his brain by means that she didn't approve of.

Her hand twitched when she glanced over at the dish drainer and saw a knife there, a sharp steak knife, more than sharp enough to – no, no, _no_, she had to stay _calm_. If she was ever going to get out of working for that bloody bastard Grindelwald, she had to _stay calm_ until she could get that ring, even if it meant Morfin mysteriously dying of a heart attack durring her son's first year at Hogwarts and her prying it off of his hand. That was years for now, and while she wasn't sure if she could put up with him for that long, she knew that she would have to. For Timothy. Regardless of how badly the man treated him, she couldn't kill Morfin and have Timothy be aware of it. For her to allow him to witness something like that would be twice as bad as Morfin's belief in the harshest form of corporal punishment. She didn't care how it would be done, how she would get that ring, except that it would have to be done in a nonviolent manner or in a way her son would never know about. So either Morfin would have to be unharmed or she would have to kill him while their son was away at school. The latter was years away, but the first seemed _impossible_.

She rotated her thumbnail away from her mouth and bit instead the side of her hand to keep from yelling. Her head was positively pounding now, with a headache with a rhythm as steady and as heavy as that of a bass drum that she had no way of getting rid of. Morena couldn't even stand hearing that man's voice anymore, nor could she stand looking at him, knowing that he was the source of corruption.

Morena continued biting at the side of her hand and pinching her elbow nearly enough to make it bleed as she listened to them. She didn't dare go outside to summon them in, she would wait until they both came back in. She would calmly send Timothy to his room (he referred to his corner of the back room as "his" room) and have a nice, civil little _talk_ with Morfin. Yes, just a talk. That was all she needed to do. Tell him to cut the crap and act like a real father before she lost _her_ temper. Morena was generally fairly patient – she had to be for as long as she had put up with her own father – but she knew what did happen when she lost her temper, and she knew what would happen then.

She knew she would practically become possessed by her father – maybe not as strong an entity, maybe not as willing to attack, but definitely angry enough to give up everything.

So, as the two of them walked through the door, Morena pretended to be doing dishes. She listened to the two of them talking. She was aware of how well they got along. Timothy was too young to understand that his father's methods of punishment for him weren't exactly… conventional, so he was always the one who apologized, reinforcing Morfin's belief that it was the best possible method for the boy, and making it destined to keep going on. It was a never-ending cycle that would never stop. Morena learned quickly that nothing she could say would do anything, not anything. The idiot's skull was too thick for any of it to get through.

After a few minutes, Timothy went off into the back room of his own accord. Morena glanced over at a clock on the wall; it was about one in the afternoon, which was generally when he decided to lay down for a nap. Morena glanced back behind her, saw that Morfin was paying no attention, and headed quickly into the back room.

In the back of her mind, a little voice just _had_ to keep reminding her that if she _did_ lose her temper with the man looking out the window at the front of the house, this might very well be the last time she would ever see her son.

She took in a deep breath as she stood in the doorway, willing her feet to propel their way forward. Timothy was already lying down, half asleep.

"Hello, Mummy," he said drowsily.

She smiled, kneeling down next to him. "You know you're not supposed to wear your day clothes to bed."

"But it's _comf-terble_," he protested in a voice of utter anguish.

"Oh, all right, I'll let you get away with it this time." He gave a yawn in response. "Could you do me a favor, sweetie?"

"What is it?"

"Stay in here for a little while. I need to talk to your father about something important."

"Grown-up stuff?"

"Yes, grown-up stuff. Can you do that for me?"

"Mm-kay, Mommy. I was gonna go sleep anyways."

"I noticed." She stood up and ruffled his hair. "Sweet dreams."

He yawned again. As she turned to leave, a small voice followed her: "Mum?"

"Hmm?" Morena turned back around with raised eyebrows and looked down to see Timothy sitting up against the headboard of his small bed, looking slightly perplexed about something. She kneeled back down next to the bed. He looked at her very seriously, more serious than she ever thought it was possible for a child of only three to look. "What is it?"

He gulped, took in a deep breath, and said, quite plainly, "Do you love Daddy?"

The question hit her like a blow to the stomach with nearly enough force to knock her off of her balanced kneeling position on the floor. The question was so straightforward that she had to struggle to understand it. Why would he ask something like that? Of course, he had to notice she never even slept in the same room. She had never thought he _would_ ask, not for a long time, but he was a curious little boy. All children were curious in their own way, they always said the strangest things, asked the oddest questions, especially at those times when their parents least expected it.

Morena could distinctly remember asking her mother the same exact question when she was five. Her mother hadn't taken any time to answer at all, wasn't taken aback by it. She had simply smiled and said simply, "Of course I do, darling." Morena had taken it to heart then, thinking her mother would lie. But thinking back, Morena remembered doubting it in the back of her mind, for the woe and wryness of her mother's smile, for the weariness in her voice when she said it. While only in her mid twenties, her mother had looked to be in her late thirties, utterly defeated, and it was all because of Albin Serran, all because of her father. Perhaps she hadn't noticed the changes, perhaps she had. Morena hadn't noticed any in her own reflection, but she tended to avoid any reflective surfaces for the fear that she might.

Morena knew now exactly why her mother had been able to answer so quickly; she had prepared an answer. Maybe if Morena had asked when she was only three her mother wouldn't have been so prepared. Maybe, but she wouldn't ever know.

"Of course," said Morena, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice despite trying to. "Why would you ask something like that, sweetie?"

He looked at his knees woefully. "Daddy said mairge in wizard families isn't about love, it's for 'keeping the bloodline clean.'" Morena felt her fist clench and unclench. "And 'e said tha' was the only reason you were married. I thought Mums and Dads were _s'posed_ to love each other."

"They are," said Morena. If this was _one_ thing she could influence her son on, she would. She wouldn't let him get into her situation, in a marriage with someone he didn't care about just to keep the bloodline full of purebloods. "They really are. Timothy, listen to me," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He looked up from his knees. "When you get older, you remember this, for me. Don't base who you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with on what their blood is; it'll only make you miserable. Your father isn't _always_ right about everything, you remember that. If anything he says seems strange to you at all, you can ask me about it."

He nodded. "But you do love him, don't you?"

Lying to Timothy killed her, particularly when he put on the puppy dog face. She shut her eyes in a moment of intense debate with herself and replied when she opened them. "Of course I do, sweetheart. You don't worry about it. You've had a long enough day already."

He nodded and lay back down. "Mm-kay. Love you, Mommy."

Morena smiled as she stood up, feeling her lips curve up into the same woeful manner as her mother's had after that question. Morena knew she should have expected it and felt rather stupid for not being prepared. She bent down and kissed her son on the forehead. "I love you too, sweetie. Now get some rest." She straightened up and turned to leave again, halfway wishing that small voice would call her back again so she wouldn't have to face the inevitable task of confronting Morfin, or so it would be delayed for another few minutes at the least. However, when she reached the door and paused, she heard nothing but the faintest sounds of breathing at the far side of the room. She looked back at her son before walking into the front room and shutting the door behind her. She looked around and spotted Morfin. Her fists clenched again, but she swallowed the lump of insults and harsh words in her throat and spoke as calmly as possible.

"I need to talk to you."

Strumming his fingers on the round kitchen table, he didn't bother looking up to reply, though his tone was somewhat suspicious. "About what?"

Morena walked cautiously over to the table and sat down at a chair across from his. She crossed her arms on top of the table and held each one firmly to it with the other's hand, hoping it might help prevent her from reaching for her wand at any point in time. God forbid she should hex him after lying to her son like that. He'd know the truth then, and that would be the worst possible thing for him. Some things were better left unsaid.

"About what? I'm not waiting around for you to talk all day, woman."

"Fine," she said bitterly. "About what you've been telling m– our son. He just told me you said marriage in wizard families had absolutely nothing to do with love, is that correct?"

"I did," he said. "Wha' of it? The boy deserves to know the truth, don't 'e?"

Morena shut her eyes. "How bloody daft are you?" she asked, managing to keep her voice calm. "Hmm? He's _three years old_, he's not going to understand something like that. He was in there worrying about whether or not his mother and father even cared about each other."

"I suppose you lied, then."

"Of course I did! Telling children things like that can have permanent damage on their minds! If he grows up into a Muggle killer, it's going to be on your shoulders, not mine. And batting them around like a bloody lunatic doesn't do anything good, either, while I'm at it."

The disbelieving scoff she received in reply made her have to dig her fingernails into her arms to help her keep her mouth shut. "It's teachin' the boy, innit? He 'adn't had to be punished in nearly a month for nothing, so he's behaving a right side better than a year ago. I'm only doing what's best for him."

"What's best for him isn't permanently damaging his psyche and making him think that the only people worth the space they take up in the world are purebloods!"

"Oh, so you're a Mudwallower now, eh?"

"No, you bloody _idiot_, have you ever heard of me talking to _them_? But I don't want my son turning into a murderer when he's older because he thinks he should be one of the only people allowed to live! The way you're going about things, you're practically training him to be the next Emeric the Evil," said Morena. She flinched when a fingernail punctured her arm and loosened her grip a little.

"Yeah, well Emeric had a good idea for the world then. Him and that Grindelwald bloke alike, and it seems even Albus Dumbledore in'nt goin' to catch 'im. And he's just as much my son as 'e is yours, if not _more_. Oh, sure, he goes running to his Mummy when his Daddy's mean to him, but he never takes more than a few minutes to come back to me, does he?"

"It doesn't matter what parent is the favorite of the child, what matters is what's _best_ for him, and telling him that Muggles don't deserve to live is going to make him want to get rid of them, and that's _definitely_ not best for him, that'll get him landed in Azkaban before he graduates Hogwarts!" Morena could hear her own voice raising now, but found herself incapable of lowering it.

"I'll teach him whatever I think he needs to know, he's _my son_."

"You're not teaching him the most practical information."

"It's what my father taught me, and it's what I'll be teaching him!"

"Oh, and you turned out perfect, didn't you? Chucked out of Hogwarts in your third year for attempting to murder a quarter of the student body, that sort of behavior is _perfectly_ suited for today's society! Then hexing a Muggle and getting sent off to Azkaban yourself. Do you really want your son to end up in a place like that?"

"If it's for the good of the Wizarding World, then yes!"

Morena stood up now, clutching the edges of the table. "You're a moron. A stupid, lunatic _moron_. I don't care what it's for, I don't want my son to end up having his soul sucked out of his face by a bunch of ragged floating black curtains with hands!"

Morfin stood up at this, pointing his wand at Morena as he did. "I'm not going to listen to you talking to me like this, I'll raise my son however the bloody hell I feel like raisin' 'im!"

Morena withdrew her own wand. "Might I remind you that I know how to block spells and _you_ don't? That's something we learn in Hogwarts in our fifth year, you see, so you wouldn't know that, would you?"

There was a long silence before either of them moved, spoke, did anything. However, it was right when Morena waved her wand and spoke the incantation for Expelliarmus that the door off to the side opened a crack, so neither of them ever heard it. Morfin looked over to where his wand had landed, quite a few feet behind him – Morena still wasn't good enough at controlling the spell to allow her to direct it back to her.

She suddenly heard all of the pent up anger coming out, as though she were only a helpless bystander listening to it all with no power to stop it.

"Blood traitor," she said slowly. "Blood _traitor_, you call me? Well you know what? You know the bloody hell _what_? I am. You're right, I really am." She laughed as she watched his face contort with anger. "I would have never married to keep the Serran family bloodline pure if I wasn't forced."

"Your parents are dead, who the bloody hell would have forced you!"

"Oh, you'd be surprised my reasoning–"

"_Keep your mouth shut."_

Morena gripped her forehead at the sudden, loud, forceful voice she heard within.

_How long have you been listening?_

"_It just started to leak through. If you mention my name, he's dead."_

Morena's heart almost stopped. She knew exactly what Grindelwald meant by "he." Her eyes shot back to the door quickly, so quickly that she didn't see that it was open a little bit, or that two wide, terrified, turquoise eyes were looking through the crack. "I wanted that ring. That damned ring, that's right. I know how much it's worth, I knew you had it. I came home from Hogwarts to find my parents dead, and I thought, what have I got to lose? I suppose I wasn't in my right mind. Suppose I'm still not. Seeing the bloody, mangled remains of what was left of my parents would have been more than enough to do it. I got roped into staying without killing you to get it because of Timothy. I care more about him than you _ever_ will."

Before she knew what was happening, her own wand had been wrestled from her hands and thrown across the floor to the other side of the room. She felt like someone had just snapped her spinal chord. There was no way she could win without that wand, no way. She could see it laying there, the polished ebony shining in the summer sunlight that crept in through the opened windows. Morena heard a noise in her throat, a helpless sort of noise, before a sharp pain came to her right cheek when it was backhanded. She flinched.

"I don't think that's so. If you cared about him, you'd have kept your bloody mouth shut, you blood traitor. You – _woman, you get over here!_"

Morena reached the kitchenette quickly. "You come over here, why don't you?" she asked, keeping her eye on him and her hand on the counter, near the steak knife she had spied upon earlier. "What's the difference where we have out little chat? Humm? Come on, then. I dare you. Get over here."

Morfin started over, definitely preparing to strike again, but she was quicker. When he was within swinging range, she ducked, grabbing the knife, and thrust the blade of the knife into his leg. With a bellow of pain, he fell to the floor on one knee. Over his swears, Morena heard a slightly higher pitched yell.

"_Daddy!_"

Her head turned her head to the door and she froze when she saw her son running out to fall down by his father's side. Amongst the voices, the one she heard suddenly inside her head was much louder, loud enough to pound a headache into her skull by sheer force.

"_GET TO HEADQUARTERS."_

_Wh– what? Now?_

"_Yes, now, dammit!"_

Morena knelt down next to her son and grabbed his arm. "Timothy –"

He wrenched it out of her grip. "Don't touch me!" he shouted at her with such force that Morena recoiled a little, though beneath the anger of his yell his voice was cracked with hurt and utter devastation. "You hurt Daddy! Blood traitor! You hurt him! You said you _did _love him, you _liar_!"

"Sweetie–"

"Go away! Leave Daddy alone!"

The words seemed sharper than even that knife had as they plunged their sharpened blade into her heart and twisted it around. After a moment of trying to ponder the words, looking into her son's wide, hurt, utterly betrayed eyes that were leaking a constant stream of tears down his cheeks, her mind gave up on her. She could still hear Grindelwald's voice inside her head yelling at her to get to headquarters before he had to come there and retrieve her himself. Morena's knees unbent themselves, and she wasn't even sure if it was her controlling them as she stood. She Apparated to the other side of the room quickly and picked up her wand.

She wasn't entirely sure how long she stood there watching her son and his father. She had only stabbed him in the leg – he would be fine. Morfin pulled the knife out of his steadily bleeding leg after a few moments and made it to his feet. He looked at her coldly.

"You heard the boy. Even he doesn't want a stinking blood traitor for a mother. Get out."

And that was when she nodded without protest and Disapparated. She was almost positive she had heard a small voice say, "But _Mummy_ –" just before she did, but when her feet landed on the floor of the old house that had served as her "headquarters", she knew it was already too late to go back.

And collapsing on the couch she realized, and her stomach gave a jolt at the thought and seemed to disappear: It was too late to _ever_ go back.


	11. Favor

_This is the last **chapter**-chapter._

_But, I'll be posting the epilogue tomorrow. **Then** it'll be done._

* * *

It was the first time Morena had returned to this "headquarters" in ages. She had been staying at the Gaunts' family home (or shack, rather) with her careless husband, and her son, the best son she could have ever asked for, even with Morfin training the child into a Muggle hater, training him to grow up and be just like his father. Morena truly hated the man. He was terrible for corrupting such a young boy. He was only three years old, for Merlin's sake!

As Morena waited, she tried to keep her emotions under control. Her temper had gotten her in trouble in the first place, worse trouble than she could have ever gotten into no matter how hard she tried. She had managed to, in her hurt anger, send a message out to Grindelwald, completely by accident, and he had asked her to – no, _commanded_ her – to come to her old headquarters immediately. She hated that.

As she hadn't been here in so long and there was no longer any house elf here, everything was clouded with dust. Morena remembered that fireplace with roaring flames within it. Now it was dark with old ashes in it, accompanied by old rotting wood. The mantelpiece above the fireplace was covered in dust that would have erupted in a grayish-brown cloud if her owl had followed her here and taken her old perch atop the fireplace. It was almost as though Marcy had known what was coming and chose to stay behind, as she almost always flew to perch on Morena's shoulder when she apparated.

The rest of the house was no better than that fireplace, from what she could see. When she had sat down on that couch, she had become surrounded by the three or four years of dust that had accumulated on it, deep within the fabric of the cushions. The old, beautiful wooden floorboards no longer shined in an invisible light. They looked splintery and lack-luster. The log walls were covered in cobwebs in every corner, and from where she was sitting, Morena could just barely make out a spider sitting in the middle of a web in the corner, waiting to catch a few poor and unsuspecting flies in its web, just as Grindelwald had managed to catch her in his deadly web without her even seeing it coming. It was a matter of either die now or die later, and Morena had stupidly chosen the latter option, which was followed by the gaining of her first and only true friend and, ultimately, her untimely demise; her going through the distress of listening to Marvolo Gaunt's suffering as he died, reminding her of her own parents; her forced marriage to a psychotic Muggle hater; the birth of her own son, Timothy Morfin Gaunt, whose innocence was already slipping at the teachings of his father.

(_he's only three sweet Merlin what is that man __**thinking**__?)_

Morena took in a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering sort of sigh, pinching her bottom lip between the pad of her thumb and her index finger as she looked around that living room. For the past years, she had only communicated with Grindelwald through thoughts, and her own preliminary, accidental bursts of Legilimency that leaked through to his side occasionally and alerted him to the current situation. He was angry now, angry that she had failed to retrieve the ring and that she had jeopardized any chances she might have had of retrieving it.

But she wasn't afraid. No, she knew she deserved whatever she got. Her poor son, alone with that madman… if she could have kept her mouth shut, this wouldn't be happening. Morfin wasn't ever going to let her near the house, wasn't ever going to let her see her son ever again, and that boy had been the only reason she hadn't just stabbed Morfin through the heart with a bloody _stick _and taken the ring right off the lunatic's hand as he lay on his floor bleeding to death. Regardless of what Morfin was like, Timothy loved his daddy, and Morena couldn't bring herself to separate them, even if it meant that Timothy was going to grow up to withhold the same exact views as his father and his grandfather.

Morena shut her eyes and tried to drown out her own thoughts before she lost control of herself. She hadn't cried when she had listened to the sounds of Marvolo Gaunt having Cruciatus Curse-induced heart failure. She hadn't cried when she had found her parents lying dead and bloody on the floor of her home. Why did she feel the urge to do so now?

(_Don't touch me! You hurt Daddy! Blood traitor! You hurt him! You said you did love him, you liar!_)

Morena ran her free hand through her hair and grabbed a large handful of it and pulled, fighting the urge to scream. Of course, _that_ was why. Those things… those were the _exact_ things that Morfin was teaching her son to say, exactly how he was teaching the child to think. He was his father's child, and Morena couldn't do anything to reverse it now. She had messed up, she had completely ruined any chances she had to

(_get the ring_)

No, not to get the bloody ring, to uncorrupt her son. The ring wasn't important. She couldn't be afraid now. This was her fault. She had wanted to delay things, she had wanted to delay retrieving the ring until after Timothy was in at least his third year in school (and Morfin wouldn't have to drag him out of school for being sorted into the wrong house – no doubt Timothy would be in Slytherin, being trained to act like the stereotypical one of them at _this_ young of an age). More than anything, she had started out wanting to delay her own death. She had joined Grindelwald for that very reason. Now, she feared it would be inevitable, but she accepted it. She was dead scared, but between the choice of living without her son while knowing he has no money and no decent guardian or not living at all, it startled her that the latter option seemed to be the better of the two.

She had never so much as thought about having children before, but now that she had one, she didn't think she could live knowing she would never be able to see him again.

"This is the worst you could have possibly done, Morena."

Morena looked up at Grindelwald – glared, rather. He had been glaring back, his normally wide, crazed eyes narrowed malevolently as he stood in front of the coffee table that separated them, but her glare seemed to surprise him enough to change the glare into a look of slight perplexity. "Don't you dare give me that," Morena said darkly. "Don't. You. _Dare_. You were the one who forced me to live with that man for over four years now. _You_. I wouldn't have lost my temper if it weren't for that. I should kill you. I really should."

"But you won't," said Grindelwald in a heavy, exasperated sigh. "Because killing isn't your nature. The only person you've come close to killing is Morfin Gaunt, and that was only a few moments ago, and it took four years for you to get to that point. I don't –"

"Shut _up_!" she yelled, standing up. She withdrew her wand and pointed it at his heart. "Just shut up! What are you going to do? Are you going to kill me? Cruciatus Curse? Tell me! Don't start bloody reasoning out why I won't kill you, because I _will_ if you do! Just tell me what I face for this. Tell me."

"As I was saying, I don't think you will kill me, either that or you won't be able to."

"If you don't answer the question I will! I swear to it!" she yelled at him.

She grew even more annoyed at signs of a grin forming on his face, and more yet when he gave a disbelieving laugh. He held out his arms. "Go one then – no, wait, I _dare_ you to. Tables have turned now, haven't they?"

"I'm warning you!"

"If you were truly going to kill me," said Grindelwald, lowering his arms to cross them in front of his chest, "then you would give no warning. You'd say it the incantation and get it over with." He paused, looking at her. "I'm waiting." The hand holding her wand shook slightly, but she kept it up. He grinned again. "Have you forgotten the incantation? Actually, there are plenty that _could_ kill me, but only one that would work beyond a shadow of a doubt. Do you know of it?" Morena kept quiet. "Avada Kedavra," he said lightly. "Aren't you going to try it out? It's quite simple. All you have to do is mean it, and apparently you think you mean it at the moment."

Morena glared at him, but his amused look didn't falter at all. She could kill him. All of this was _his_ fault. She could, she _had_ to, not only for her satisfaction but for the good of the wizarding world. She breathed in one deep breath.

"Are you going to –?"

"Shut _up_!" she yelled, and her throat was beginning to grow sore. She gulped inaudibly. _"Avada –"_ She paused, her mouth not wanting to spill out the correct words. _"A – Av–va"_

"This is exactly what I meant. You can't even force the words, let alone mean them. That's a terrible weakness to have."

"_Avada K–kedav–_ _dammit!_"

Morena threw her wand on the floor and her knees collapsed, so she was back on the couch with her hands over her face. She shut her eyes tightly upon feeling that distinct burning in them. "You listen to me," she said quietly. "Really, _please_ listen, I'm begging you." When he remained silent for a moment, she continued. "You're right. I can't kill you. I can't kill anyone. I'm weak. And I came into this knowing what was going to have to happen, eventually if not right away at the least. I joined you to postpone it, but I knew it would happen. I'm not immortal in the least bit. I knew you'd give me a task I couldn't handle, and now you only have one option. You'll have to kill me. It's all there is."

When Morena raised her head from her hands, she saw Grindelwald's expression was half perplexed, half curious. She shook her head and lowered it back to her hands as he spoke. "You sound almost as though you want to be killed," he said. "I can't envision that at all. There isn't a valid reason in the world for it."

"There is," said Morena, her voice muffled by the palms of her hand. "I'd rather die than have to work for you anymore, for one." She took in a deep breath and let it out in a slow, shaky manner before pulling her hands away from her eyes, inconspicuously wiping them of any tears that might threaten to fall as she did so. "And for another, what have I got left now? You killed my parents, I'll be killed if I go near my own son. All that's left is a life serving someone whose beliefs I strongly disagree with." She shook her head. "There's no point to it. You'd be better off killing me, since I'm not going to do anything you say anymore. This was the final straw. You threatening to kill my son if I so much as mentioned your name. And if I disobey you, you'll use him against me again. It's how you work. You know I don't care about my own life, not half as much as his, not even a hundredth as much. As I said, I knew I was going to die when I joined you, it was just a choice of dying then or dying later. I was afraid then, but I'm not so much anymore."

"I had no plans to kill you."

"Then what are you going to do?" she asked. "Even if you let me go, I'm not going to have anything. And as it is right now, since the money my… _family_, though I really wouldn't call it that if I could think of anything better, was living off of was the money I had inherited from my parents. I won't be able to live knowing that my son's going to grow up in worse poverty than even his own father ever had to endure. The only way for him to have anything would be if he inherited it."

He shook his head slowly. "As I said, I had no plans to kill you, none at all. But I suppose those plans could change if you're going to be persistent about it. I still don't see your reason. Anything has to be better than death. That's exactly what I want the Deathly Hallows for; it's said that the one who owns all three items will become a master of Death, prolonging their life to the greatest possible extent. I'll oblige, if you do so wish, but you might want to take your time to think about it."

Morena rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, mocking deep thought, and looked back. "I've thought about it. I'm sure."

Anger flashed in his eyes. "It isn't smart for any single being to make a mockery of death."

"I'm already completely sure! I don't know what'll happen to me, nor do I really care. I don't have my son anymore, that Gaunt bastard is going to keep him from me."

"And you still want the child back after what he said?"

This struck her like a blow to the head – was this man really so out of tune with human emotion? – but she managed to recover quickly and answer, though not quite as calmly as she had wanted to. "It's none of your damn business what he said," Morena said through gritted teeth, her fists clenching, "but _yes_, I _do_. His father's trained him to be like that. He watched everything through a crack in the door and I didn't even realize it until a moment before I came here. He was scared and he was angry, and I'm not going to blame him for what his father's taught him. I tried to reason with that man before I lost it, he just doesn't listen."

"I'm aware. I heard quite a bit of the conversation before I interfered at all. I'm also aware that you did all you could do not to lose your temper even before that conversation, as you've wanted to kill him every time he laid a hand on your son. My threat against him was out of panic and nothing more."

Morena didn't respond. She had to chew on her tongue to keep her motherly instincts from possessing her and forcing her to yell her head off. She wanted to remain calm… even though she had never felt more mortal in her entire life. She didn't know if she was ready to die, and she certainly didn't want to… but she felt like she would have to for the world to work out smoothly, like it was necessary for her son's well being. She definitely couldn't return, not even to offer all of her money to them. She would be killed the moment she darkened their doorstep. Morena did hold a strong belief that there were some things that the human mind just knew – whether it was just witches and wizards or Muggles as well, she was unsure – and whether or not it was time for the owner of the mind to leave the world was one of those things.

She finally managed to swallow any words she might have had to say in regards to the mention of that inhuman threat, and nodded. "I'm sure it was. I'm not going to blame anyone for this except myself. I could have avoided everything if I had just chosen the easy way out in the first place, but I chose to work for you. Granted, I would have suffered either way, as you weren't planning on letting me go with nothing but Avada Kedavra then, but I think that sort of suffering might have been a little bit easier."

"Maybe." There was another moment in which nothing but silence seemed to fill the room. Morena still hated the way silence always seemed to sound in this house, even after being away from it for a few years. Morena chose to speak next.

"Do me a favor," she said, reaching into her pocket, "and mail off my Gringotts key to them. Write an explanation as though it was me writing it to go along with it."

He nodded. "You're sure this is what you want?"

"You seem quite a bit more concerned than the average slave-driver." She grinned at the look of annoyance. "Of course I'm sure. I'm not sure I _want_ to, but I'm sure it's necessary. I'm guessing you probably don't even need to say the incantation to do the spell, do you?"

"Not generally, no."

Morena nodded and sat up straight. "Good," she said quietly staring down at her knees. "I don't want to know when it's coming. You were right," she added, looking up at him. "I'll admit that. Some things definitely _are_ worse than death." She declined her head again. "And if you even attempt to go near my son, god help me, I will come back from the grave and tear your bloody head off."

Morena was shaking slightly, and she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She was almost sure that if she glanced over her shoulder, she would be staring into the skeletal face of Death himself, scythe in hand, ready to lop her soul up and out of its bodily cage and drag it off to the next life, whatever it might be. She shut her eyes and, trying to calm herself by desperately thinking

_(It's for Timothy, it's for my son, it's got to be done, he'll be the one that has to suffer if it isn't, it's for Timothy)_

and waiting for it to hit.

Moments later, Gellert Grindelwald lowered his wand and stepped back a few feet to survey the scene. The dusty walls, the unlit and equally dirty fireplace, the dull wooden floors, and now the equal lifelessness of the body lying sideways on the sofa all made the house as horrible as it was. It always had been this loathsome and horrid to her, trapped within it like a prison.

Had it really been a favor? His own mind chided him for the question; he had killed plenty of disloyal followers before, so it shouldn't make a difference, it told him, no difference at all. But it did somehow. The only other

_(murder)_

_death_, he told himself forcibly, that he had ever questioned had been that of Ariana Dumbledore (and his stomach gave a rebellious jolt at the thought of the name), but that had been an accident, an accident _entirely_, though he had been the true cause of it, no doubt. The anger was what always caused these things to happen. This time, though, that wasn't so. She had asked to be killed, insisted on it, and he had agreed to do it, but whether or not that made it any more righteous was unclear to him. No killing was righteous, that was definitely true, but it wasn't supposed to bother _him_.

She had been right from the start. Her daring him to kill her had been a bit puzzling to him, he was used to the exact opposite of things. It had either shown courage or stupidity, maybe both – they were one in the same most of the time. Somehow, it had been as though she had known that it would stump him, or even that it would anger him enough to kill Marvolo Gaunt himself.

None of that mattered now, though. With as much left to do with the Deathly Hallows as there was, he didn't particularly have time to dwell on the past. All he had gained was another name he wouldn't be able to so much as allow to enter his mind again.

And so, Grindelwald walked to the coffee table and picked up the Gringott's vault key she had dropped there. The least he could do would be to keep his word. He would send the key off as she had asked, and he wouldn't bother her son at all. That would involve giving up on the Resurrection Stone for now, but

_(god help me I will come back from the grave and tear your bloody head off if you even attempt to harm my son)_

some sacrifices did have to be made occasionally.

* * *

_Morfin_

_It was a difficult enough decision, but I've  
come to the conclusion that being forced to  
live my life without ever seeing my child  
again would be a torture that I couldn't bear  
living through. So, simply enough, I won't.  
_

_To make things simpler, I'll call this my will.  
I leave Timothy Morfin Gaunt everything that  
was mine, money included, for him to have  
immediate access to as soon as he comes  
of age. If you deprive him of this, you'll  
regret it. I've told only a few of my plans,  
__and those few are willing to enforce this will  
to the bitter end._

_He __will__ get everything. The key that is enclosed  
in this envelope is included in that. You will  
use the money only for his benefit and will buy  
what he needs for Hogwarts with the money in  
my Gringotts vault. Once again, there are  
people who will know if you haven't done as I  
wish you to._

_Most sincerely,  
Morena Serran_

Timothy blinked at the mixture of random characters upon the paper as he looked at it. He understood a few simple words, like "to" and "as" and a few other two-or-three letter words. He saw his dad pick up a small key, examine it, and drop it on the table with a scoff. Timothy looked up at him wonderingly. He was at a complete lack of understandings of what half of grown-ups' expressions or actions meant, and what they said didn't even make sense half the time.

"Daddy?"

"What?" he asked irately.

"Is this from Mummy?"

"Yeah," he said, snatching the paper back. "It is."

"Is she coming home?"

Now a loud bark of laughter came, and Timothy was further confused. Laughter was supposed to be happy, not scornful. "That blood traitor wouldn't be allowed back in this house even if she could come back here."

"Where'd she go?"

"Can't take a hint, can you, boy?" Timothy subconsciously tilted his head slightly to the side, his eyes wide. "She's _dead_. She's off with your grandfather and your aunt because she was a Muggle-loving bitch. She's never coming back."

Timothy gulped. She was… "dead"? He could only ever remember her telling him about "dead" once, his dad had never mentioned it. It meant the place that people went to when they got really sick or too old and could never come back from. The picture he got in his head was a remote island in the middle of the ocean with a brick wall all around it. He felt a lump in his throat and his eyes stinging at the thought of his mum being trapped behind that brick wall with all those other people that were –

"Don't you start blubbering over it, you know as well as I do what she was."

Timothy gulped back that large lump that was forming in his throat and nodded as his father stood and went towards the door to the back room with the key and the note. She was never coming back. The words rang through his mind over and over, but he couldn't grasp them no matter how hard he tried. He was sure that within a few hours, within a few days at least, she'd Apparate with a little _pop!_ and things would be back to normal, he was sure of it. It had to be. She hadn't been sick or old, so she _couldn't_ be "dead." Maybe Daddy had been lying to him, like Mummy had so he wouldn't be sad about what he had said about marriage only having to do with being handy for keeping purebloods in pure families.

He looked at the window, half-expecting to see her there and half knowing she wouldn't be there, she would never be there…. She _had_ to come home. She just had to.

But he knew – and Timothy bit his bottom lip to fight crying, as he didn't want his daddy to hear him – that this hope was more than likely a false one.


	12. Epilogue: Déjà Vu Again

_And finally, at last, the prologue._

_I've quite enjoyed writing this, but I've got to move on to my sequels now._

_The sequel I'm working on now, **Second Heir**, takes place durring Timothy Gaunt and Tom Riddles's sixth year at Hogwarts. I made a mistake in the timelines that I don't feel like correcting. In the flashback in **Chamber of Secrets**, I remembered that Tom Riddle had been sixteen, so I set the story in their sixth year as the time the Chamber was opened. I failed to remember that the flashback was in June, which would have been just after Tom's sixteenth birthday, meaning he was in his FIFTH year at the time. I don't want to go back and change everything, though, so I think I'll just call it AU and be done with it. Anywho, **Second Heir** is told from Timothy's point of view at the time Tom opened the Chamber of Secrets._

* * *

Timothy stared idly out the window of his house, propping his head up with his hand in a lazy manner to watch outside for anything interesting. The dull, reddish rays of sunlight fell upon his face as the sun began to lie down behind the western horizon, barely visible for all the trees blocking it, but just barely seen on the path in front of the little house. A couple of horse galloped past at a moderate speed, a muggle riding it towards the town ahead on the path. He sneered slightly, quite amused by the utter inefficiency of the horse. Wizards had Apparition, Portkeys, broomsticks, Floo Powder, all sorts of things. Muggles had animals.

They did have some nice cars, though (the one on the horse even had a car, so it seemed pointless to ride that bloody horse). Timothy wouldn't say so in front of his father, but he would have preferred a Mercedes Benz over a Cleansweep model broomstick _any_ day. He rather liked keeping his feet on the ground.

It was Timothy Gaunt's birthday, but it was really no different from any other day, not in the least. His father had forgotten what day his birthday was on ages ago. In about a week, without fail, Timothy knew the man would pose the inevitable question: "You're birthday's coming up soon, isn't that right?" August 3, 1938 was the day, so he was turning eleven. Less than a month from now, he would be packed and on his way to Hogwarts where, as his father said, he would either be "sorted into Slytherin or dragged home by his ear and beaten within an inch of his life."

He didn't know who was in charge of the sorting of first years into houses, but when he got to Hogwarts, he was definitely going to beg whoever it was to put him in Slytherin. To hell with pride – he would rather lose all dignity than be forced to sleep standing up for the next year. He wasn't really afraid of the sorting, though. Timothy had learned everything his father had taught him, mostly with great ease, as well as a few other things he had taught himself. When he had been taken school shopping, Timothy had, unbeknownst to his father, slipped a couple books on Legilimency and Occlumency into the cauldron to look through by himself. That had been a few months ago. When he was learning Legilimency, it had come to him almost as second nature, and now it was just an everyday thing to him. He barely had to focus to read his father's thoughts (though they made little to no sense most of the time). He knew how to use Occlumency, but as he didn't know anyone who knew Legilimency, he couldn't test to see how successful his mind's blockade truly was. He knew it well enough in theory, but he couldn't do any practical tests.

He would just have to wait until he got to Hogwarts and find out if any teachers knew how to use it. The book had stated that it was advanced, but it had come so easy to him that he didn't understand how it could be advanced. Timothy had a hard time with basic level Charms, only _basic_ level, but Legilimency had been child's play, simpler than anything his father had taught him somehow. Perhaps it was because he didn't have an insane person teaching him.

"Are you looking out the bloody window again?" Timothy's eyes narrowed for a moment and he focused on the horse that was clopping away at its leisurely pace. Timothy had a certain respect for his father and didn't often back talk the man. Try as he did, Morfin Gaunt had just never been fit to raise a child by himself. He taught Timothy proper manners, speech, reading, trained him to recognize differences in his perception of Parseltongue and plain English, but the rest had been left up to Timothy. Once the basics were done with, he had been left to fend for himself as far as cooking and cleaning went.

"What the hell is so interesting out there? Just a bunch of damned Muggles…"

That was true enough, Timothy had to agree. That's all that was there. Great and Little Hangleton were nothing but Muggles with two wizards smack in the middle of the two towns, living in a grimy little shack that most of them were afraid of. "I was just thinking."

"Save some of that for school. Hopefully you'll manage to learn basic Charms by the time you get there. I can't be bothered to teach someone who isn't willing to learn." Timothy rolled his eyes and continued staring out the window, sitting in the backwards chair for the dining table he had dragged over to the opening. He pushed two fingers against one of his temples in a subconscious imitation of

_(Of who, exactly?)_

His brow furrowed, he shook it from his mind. His father was giving him enough of a headache, he didn't need to help it along. He wasn't sure eleven year olds were even supposed to get headaches. He didn't know anyone his age. Even if he _could_ fathom the idea of going near anyone in Little Hangleton, in that filthy Muggle breeding ground, there were no other children his age. He was alone with his father.

He managed to push the pressure back into his skull before it could encompass his entire head and take over in the pounding way it always did when the man talked too much. He just had to keep reminding himself that his father wasn't quite all there, he wasn't quite right in the head, he didn't have anyone there to help him

_(–blood traitor you lied you said that–)_

And the headache was returning again, suddenly, as if trying to push the rest of that broken, stupid thought to the front of his mind. What the hell _was_ it? He heard it every so often, but it never made any sense, no more sense than a flying broomstick would make to a Muggle. He could never get the whole thought without his head feeling like its contents were about to burst or boil over the edge.

He shook his mind from the thought when he realized his father hadn't said anything in a few minutes. He glanced behind him and attempted to employ Legilimency on the silent man so as to make sure he wasn't planning homicide or anything. It came easily enough, as his father had no idea how Occlumency was used and had no means to block him and had no idea in the first place that Timothy _could_ read his thoughts.

_Just like his damned mother, looks just like her. Swear to Merlin, if the boy turns out the same he's dead. Slytherin. Has to be Slytherin, I taught him myself._

And he withdrew immediately. That had been the first time Timothy had ever caught him thinking about who he most often referred to as "that bloody woman," among other, slightly more profane names that would have caused Timothy to be beaten to an unnatural shade of purple if his father ever heard him repeat them aloud.

That was the only good thing that came out of his father's temper, in Timothy's opinion – that he had learned to fight back. He was tall for his age, and though not particularly burly (at all – he thought his arms like someone had tied two pieces of rope on either side of a stick), he was quick and he could fight well enough. When his father sent him into town to buy food, the older Muggles, the teenagers, had quickly learned that the Gaunt boy was not a force to be taken lightly. And that was all thanks to his father, who had gotten at least a quarter as many bruises and black eyes as Timothy had accumulated over the years.

He respected his father; he wasn't going to put up with being used as a punching bag. His father, though, wasn't ever going to understand that, just like he wasn't ever going to understand a lot of things. Timothy understood well enough what the Gaunt family had to do in order to stay pure up until he was born. Inbreeding, forced marriages, hatefulness between mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. His own grandparents on his father's side (according to a book he had found simply labeled "Gaunt," featuring detailed pages of the family tree and different branches of them) had been cousins, and when he questioned his father about it, he managed to get him to say what had happened after hours of prying and dodging punches like a fly dodges a flyswatter. The two of them had hated each other, and after years of taking crap from her husband, Timothy's grandmother had hung herself.

Right above his bed.

Which had been a little more information that Timothy had needed to know. Now he had to sleep with one eye open to make sure a dead phantom lady hanging from an imaginary chandelier wasn't going to grab him in his sleep. No, eleven years old wasn't too old for monsters, not when a woman had hung herself over that eleven-year-old's bed.

Timothy continued looking out the window when he heard his father grumbling (in Parseltongue, no less, which was generally his chosen language when angry about something) and walking off into the back room. Good, he had the front to himself again. It was much more pleasant that way.

* * *

It had taken quite a bit to drag his father out of bed to have the man Floo Powder them to London so they could get to the train station on September the first before eleven in the morning. They had to rush to get there, even though the Leaky Cauldron was quite close to the train station. When his father told him how to get onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters, Timothy looked at the man blankly, holding his cart with all of his school things on it to keep it from rolling off.

"You're kidding, right?"

"You're wasting time, we're already running late," he growled at Timothy.

"You want me to run into that wall right there?" Timothy said, pointing at the brick barrier between Platforms Nine and Ten. "Are you _mad_? There're Muggles bloody everywhere – if it does work, they'll go into a panic and there'll be a riot. If it doesn't, they'll think I'm _mad_."

"Go."

"You go first, I don't believe it."

"If I go first," said his father, doing everything in his power to keep himself from bellowing, "then you and that cart of yours are going to be dragged by your hair into the –"

"Going!"

And at that, to avoid having to be dragged _anywhere_ by his hair, he started towards the barrier at a quick pace. As he approached it at full speed, he closed his eyes and held his breath, having almost the feeling of diving into a body of water blindfolded, not knowing how deep nor how cold nor what size, with only his father's word to go by on it, his father's words of "you're going to be dragged in there by your hair if you don't go now."

He didn't hit a wall, and he managed to slow his cart to a halt before opening his eyes, almost afraid of what he might see. But then – _then_ he saw a red steam engine train, a large train – what he would be riding to Hogwarts no doubt – and people, so many people, _all witches and wizards._ He caught a bit of conversation from a nearby family with a young girl and an older boy.

"Now, what house are you going to be sorted into, Annie?"

"_Dad_, why do you have to keep _asking_ me that? And _don't_ call me Annie, it's a little girl's name…."

"Oh, leave her alone, Mark, she'll be sorted into whatever house she's sorted into," said her mother, sounding slightly amused.

"Bet she's in Hufflepuff," said the older boy.

"Oh, just because you're in you're last year doesn't mean you –"

"You might just be daft enough to be put th–"

"Adam!"

"Sorry, Mum…"

Timothy couldn't help but smile, looking around at everything, all the people with owls and cats and toads, students boarding the train, talking excitedly, friends and acquaintances who hadn't seen each other over the summer greeting each other – and then there was his father. That made his grin fade to something closer to a grimace, which was just a general reaction these days.

"Don't do that, it makes you look like an idiot." And now his face straightened out automatically. "Good." And when Timothy's father crossed his arms, Timothy noticed something odd – no, far beyond just odd, it was completely eerie.

"Er – Dad – your ring's– er– gone," he said blankly, pointing.

Morfin Gaunt pulled his arms away from each other and opened one hand, where the ring lay, giving his son a _you-can't-possibly-be-that-daft_ look. Timothy shrugged. "You never take it off, I just thought –"

"I'd _never_ lose this ring for as long as it's in my possession," he said tonelessly (though Timothy could tell he had wanted to yell it by the way his hand that wasn't hold the ring had almost twitched into a fist. He continued, more calmly, "But, I suppose you're quite a bit more mature than you used to be. You're entering school now, you managed to get over your wisecracking stage well enough."

Timothy only blinked a few times when his father held out the ring. "This is a test, isn't it?" he said suspiciously. "If I take the ring it proves something that I'm not aware of, and if I don't then it means that I passed whatever the test is. Right?"

"It's not a test, just take the bloody thing," his father said, sounding annoyed by this. Timothy reached forward almost reluctantly and picked up the ring. "It's doubtful it will fit, but I think it's time I passed it on all the same." He said it in such a casual manner that it disturbed Timothy a little. However, he nodded obediently – protesting to him in front of a crowd this large would only cause a large crowd to gather when they got into a fight.

"Th – thank you."

After saying a quick goodbye to his father, he hurried to the train, eager to get out of his Muggle clothes. He managed to drag his trunk onto the train without help (what the hell were the prefects even _there_ for?). They had arrived a bit late, so most of the compartments were full. He managed to find one that was empty of all but one boy, staring disinterestedly out the window at the many families outside. Timothy slid the door to the compartment open and spoke cautiously.

"Er – is anyone else sitting in here?"

"No."

Timothy gave an inward, resigned sigh – regardless of whatever blood the boy had come from, this seemed to be his only option. He hauled his trunk up onto the luggage rack and sat down on the other seat. He looked out the window for a few minutes as well. At eleven o' clock sharp, the train jerked into motion. All that were left outside were parents (not his, just the ones that seemed to be in their right minds) as various students hung halfway out windows shouting their last goodbyes to their concerned guardians. Timothy was willing to bet his father was already back home and not worried in the least bit, and the thought ended in a small scoff.

He looked down at the ring still clenched tightly in his hand, making a mental note to find a chain to put it on until it actually fit. For the first time ever, Timothy was able to give the item a good examination. A small symbol embedded into the stone – a triangle with a circle inside and a line going through the centers of both – was what his father referred to as the Peverell family coat of arms. It didn't look much like a coat of arms to Timothy, but it might have been.

What seemed stranger yet was that there were a few scratches along the outer edge of the stone, scratches upon the gold encasing it that looked to have been rather freshly made, almost as though someone had taken out the stone and put it back in. What reason would there have been for that? Granted, his father was mad and generally lacked the reasoning of a brick wall (it wasn't disrespect, it was sadly true), but why take out the stone if only to put it back it? Timothy shrugged it off and slipped the ring into his pocket, careful to make sure it wasn't going to fall out, and took to looking back out the window.

Within the next ten minutes, Timothy had started looking out the window with slightly more interest than earlier, as flat green fields and patches of forest passed by. Considering who he had been forced to live with, the furthest he had ever traveled was Diagon Alley a few weeks ago, and that was just by Floo Powder, which was distinctively uninteresting. Just a bunch of spinney green flames that ended with your clothes and face getting covered with ashes.

After another five minutes of silence, a voice across from him made him jump.

"Pureblood?"

Timothy looked up; then he was forced to blink a few times. He was suddenly experiencing a horrible, dizzying feeling of déjà vu, but he couldn't figure out exactly why. "Yeah," he said slowly. "You?"

The boy shrugged. "I'm guessing more along the lines of half. I think my dad was probably a wizard. My mum died right after I was born, so I don't think she'd be nearly powerful enough to have been a witch. I'm stuck in a Muggle orphanage."

"I'm stuck with my father." He lifted up his sleeve to reveal a hand-shaped bruise around his arm. "He's really rather pleasant," he added sarcastically. "My mum's dead as well, he's not really right in the head, so I'm stuck doing just about everything around the house and getting blamed for everything that goes wrong. I'm Timothy Gaunt, by the way."

He nodded in regard, but his eyes were halfway staring out the window. "Tom Riddle."

There came that déjà vu again, but Timothy brushed it away as though it were a spider that had landed on his shoulder by mistake. The familiarity confused him a bit, even disturbed him a little, but if he was going to make a huge deal out of it then he might as well go ahead and plaster a "kick me" sign to his back. He already wasn't entirely sure how to talk to people his age, so if he was doing all right talking to _anyone_, he wasn't going to make a fuss over recognizing the person and creep them out in the process.

They both got along fairly well. Regardless of whether or not Tom Riddle was a pureblood, he might have hated Muggles more than Timothy's own father did, from his time living in a Muggle orphanage, apparently surrounded by the worst and the rudest of them. He had started out showing his magic whenever he was angry, but started to gain control of it without really knowing what it was.

By the time they were at Hogwarts, it had grown dark outside and it was much harder to see the scenery around the train. Everyone was already in their school robes, prefects were pacing importantly up and down the corridor of the train, alerting the all the first years to leave their trunks in their compartments and they would be transported to their common rooms. Timothy was repeatedly tripping over the hem of his robes in an attempt to balance his hat on top of his hair.

"Going to bloody chop it all off one day…" he was grumbling under his breath as his hat fell off of his hair and into his hands again, much to the amusement of a small crowd of first year girls walking past him. He flinched. "Why the bloody hell do they all have to giggle so damn much?"

Tom shrugged. They were just leaving the train, and Tom seemed to busy looking for Hogwarts to be interested in anything else. They didn't see the school immediately, but the could see that the rest of the first years were being ushered off in another direction by someone yelling, almost drunkenly, "Firs' years this way, now! 'Urry up, 'aven't got all nigh', now, 'ave we?" _Hiccup_. "Come on, the lot of yeh!"

"That's got to be the gamekeeper, Blanell, I think his name is," said Timothy quietly and slightly amused as they followed the pack of excited first years. "My dad says he was there back when he was in school and all he ever did was stumble around the grounds like a drunken idiot."

"Judging by the sound of him I don't doubt it," said Tom, sounding mildly amused himself. "Are we taking _those_ to the castle?" he added, looking down a hill they were descending. Timothy spotted them – boats. He heaved a sigh of relief.

"Sweet _Merlin_, I thought for sure they were going to make us use broomsticks."

"Are they that bad?"

"Not to most," said Timothy, "but as I don't see any wings growing out of my shoulders, I don't believe I was ever meant to fly. Dad had me try it once, I crashed into a tree." He heard a snort of laughter. "It's not funny, I about broke my leg… can't help it if I'm not very aerodynamic…" Timothy mumbled as they boarded onto one of the boats. "How're we supposed to power them if there're no – _oi!_" The boats had suddenly kicked into gear without any help. He heard sniggers from those in surrounding boats when he nearly fell into the water in surprise. He crossed his arms irately at this.

Within a few minutes of travelling through the lake, Blanell hollered back that they would probably be coming up on the school soon – and only a moment later, there it was, standing high upon a mountain cliff with its lit windows glimmering into the night. There were mixed _oohs_ and _ahhs_ and _wows_ from the first years; Timothy doubted that there was a single person who wasn't gaping at the place, with its tall towers extending higher than any building Timothy had ever seen in his life.

"That's bloody brilliant…" he said in awe.

Tom nodded in agreement. "Now all that's left is the inside."

* * *

After the Sorting Ceremony (which had been no more than each first year putting a hat atop their head and it yelling out their house) and a large feast with more food than Timothy had ever thought could have existed in the world beforehand with the rations he and his father lived on, everyone was clambering to the common rooms and the dorms. Timothy had been sorted into Slytherin (though, for a brief and horrifying moment while listening to the hat, he thought it might place him in Ravenclaw), as had Tom and about a fourth of the rest of the students. A prefect led them to the common room, where they had to make a patch of wall disappear by saying a password or something – Timothy was too tired for anything the prefect said to sink in, he'd just ask Tom or someone later, tomorrow when classes started. Yeah, that would work.

He yawned abruptly as the prefect was explaining and, as was natural, everyone turned to look at him for a moment before listening to the prefect again. Then, they were finally allowed inside and told where to go.

"Boys, up those stairs, girls up those," said the dark-brown-haired prefect, pointing from left to right. "There'll be a hallway at the top of each and the doors on it will be labeled by year. Please make your way into the first year dorms, where your trunks will be set by your beds."

They all headed up, Timothy in the back of the crowd of first year boys, stumbling in a near drunken manner up the stairs.

_(I think someone slipped firewhiskey in my pumpkin juice…)_

He laughed at the thought, so he was unfocused when he reached the hall. He stumbled over the last step and had to catch himself on the opposite wall. The boy in front of him, who he recognized as Terentius Malfoy, glanced behind him. "Did you sneak in alcohol or something?"

"Not that I recall," said Timothy, scratching the back of his head. He shrugged and continued down the hall with everyone else.

In the dorm, he barely noticed what anything looked like. He spotted his trunk from across the room, walked over, and fell face first onto the bed. It was far more comfortable than the rock-like thing he had to sleep on at home. He managed to kick of his shoes, but was feeling a bit too sluggish and too comfortable to change into night clothes.

But even as he shut his eyes, that one troubled thought leaked back into his mind. He still had no idea why Tom Riddle seemed so eerily familiar….


End file.
